i.e. 20 glucose molecules linked together would have 19 bonds
Molecular formula
# of molecules * molecular formula - number of bonds * H20 (from hydrolysis)
i.e. when you bond 5 glucose molecules together you have to subtract 4H2O
pH/pOH
-log[H+] = pH
-log[OH-] = pOH
pH + pOH = 14
Leaf surface area
i.e. using graph paper to find surface area
Transpiration rate
Amount of water used / surface area / time
Labs
Transpiration Lab
Basically you take this potometer which measures the amount of water that gets sucked up by a plant that you have and you expose the plant to different environmental conditions (light, humidity, temperature) and see how fast the water gets transpired
Random stuff to know:
It’s hard to get it to work properly
A tight seal of vaseline keeps everything tidy and prevents water from evaporating straight from the tube, also allows for plant to suck properly
Water travels from high water potential to low water potential
2) Cell Structure & Function
Content
Cellular Components
Many membrane-bound organelles evolved from once free prokaryotes via endosymbiosis, such as mitochondria (individual DNA)
Compartmentalization allows for better SA:V ratio and helps regulate cellular processes
Cytoplasm: thick solution in each cell containing water, salts, proteins, etc; everything - nucleus
Cytoplasmic streaming: moving all the organelles around to give them nutrients, speeds up reactions
Cytosol: liquid of the cytoplasm (mostly water)
Plasma Membrane: separates inside of cell from extracellular space, controls what passes through amphipathic area (selectively permeable)
Aquaporin: hole in membrane that allows water through
Cell Wall: rigid polysaccharide layer outside of plasma membrane in plants/fungi/bacteria
Bacteria have peptidoglycan, fungi have chitin, and plants have cellulose and lignin
Turgor pressure pushes the membrane against the wall
Nucleus: contains genetic information
Has a double membrane called the nuclear envelope with pores
Nucleolus: in nucleus, produces ribosomes
Chromosomes: contain DNA
Centrioles: tubulin thing that makes up centrosome in the middle of a chromosome
Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum: storage of proteins and lipids
Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum: synthesizes and packages proteins
Chloroplasts: photosynthetic, sunlight transferred into chemical energy and sugars
More on this in photosynthesis
Vacuoles: storage, waste breakdown, hydrolysis of macromolecules, plant growth
Plasmodesmata: channels through cell walls that connect adjacent cells
Golgi Apparatus: extracellular transport
Lysosome: degradation and waste management
Mutations in the lysosome cause the cell to swell with unwanted molecules and the cell will slow down or kill itself
Mitochondria: powerhouse of the cell
Mutations in the mitochondria cause a lack of deficiency of energy in the cell leading to an inhibition of cell growth
Vesicles: transport of intracellular materials
Microtubules: tubulin, stiff, mitosis, cell transport, motor proteins
Microfilaments: actin, flexible, cell movement
Flagella: one big swim time
Cilia: many small swim time
Peroxisomes: bunch of enzymes in a package that degrade H202 with catalase
Ribosomes: protein synthesis
Microvilli: projections that increase cell surface area like tiny feetsies
In the intestine, for example, microvilli allow more SA to absorb nutrients
Cytoskeleton: hold cell shape
Cellular Transport
Passive transport: diffusion
Cell membranes selectively permeable (large and charged repelled)
Tonicity: osmotic (water) pressure gradient
Cells are small to optimize surface area to volume ratio, improving diffusion
Primary active transport: ATP directly utilized to transport
Secondary active transport: something is transported using energy captured from movement of other substance flowing down the concentration gradient
Endocytosis: large particles enter a cell by membrane engulfment
Phagocytosis: “cell eating”, uses pseudopodia around solids and packages it within a membrane
Pinocytosis: “cell drinking”, consumes droplets of extracellular fluid
Receptor-mediated endocytosis: type of pinocytosis for bulk quantities of specific substances
Exocytosis: internal vesicles fuse with the plasma membrane and secrete large molecules out of the cell
Ion channels and the sodium potassium pump
Ion channel: facilitated diffusion channel that allows specific molecules through
Sodium potassium pump: uses charged ions (sodium and potassium)
Membrane potential: voltage across a membrane
Electrogenic pump: transport protein that generates voltage across a membrane
Proton pump: transports protons out of the cell (plants/fungi/bacteria)
Cotransport: single ATP-powered pump transports a specific solute that can drive the active transport of several other solutes
Bulk flow: one-way movement of fluids brought about by pressure
Dialysis: diffusion of solutes across a selective membrane
Cellular Components Expanded: The Endomembrane System
Nucleus + Rough ER + Golgi Bodies
Membrane and secretory proteins are synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, vesicles with the integral protein fuse with the cis face of the Golgi apparatus, modified in Golgi, exits as an integral membrane protein of the vesicles that bud from the Golgi’s trans face, protein becomes an integral portion of that cell membrane
Calculations
Surface area to volume ratio of a shape (usually a cube)
U-Shaped Tube (where is the water traveling)
Solution in u-shaped tube separated by semi-permeable membrane
find average of solute (that is able to move across semi permeable membrane)
add up total molar concentration on both sides
water travels where concentration is higher
Water Potential = Pressure Potential + Solute Potential
Solute Potential = -iCRT
i = # of particles the molecule will make in water
C = molar concentration
R = pressure constant (0.0831)
T = temperature in kelvin
Labs
Diffusion and Osmosis
Testing the concentration of a solution with known solutions
Dialysis bag
Semipermeable bag that allows the water to pass through but not the solute
Potato core
Has a bunch of solutes inside
Relevant Experiments
Lynne Margolis: endosymbiotic theory (mitochondria lady)
Chargaff: measured A/G/T/C in everything (used UV chromatography)
Franklin + Watson and Crick: discovered structure of DNA; Franklin helped with x ray chromatography
3) Cellular Energetics
Content
Reactions and Thermodynamics
Baseline: used to establish standard for chemical reaction
Catalyst: speeds up a reaction (enzymes are biological catalysts)
Exergonic: energy is released
Endergonic: energy is consumed
Coupled reactions: energy lost/released from exergonic reaction is used in endergonic one
Laws of Thermodynamics:
First Law: energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and the sum of energy in the universe is constant
Second Law: energy transfer leads to less organization (greater entropy)
Third Law: the disorder (entropy) approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches 0
Cellular processes that release energy may be coupled with other cellular processes
Loss of energy flow means death
Energy related pathways in biological systems are sequential to allow for a more controlled/efficient transfer of energy (product of one metabolic pathway is reactant for another)
Bioenergetics: study of how energy is transferred between living things
Fuel + 02 = CO2 + H20
Combustion, Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration (with slight differences in energy)
Enzymes
Speed up chemical processes by lowering activation energy
Structure determines function
Active sites are selective
Enzymes are typically tertiary- or quaternary-level proteins
Catabolic: break down / proteases and are exergonic
Anabolic: build up and are endergonic
Enzymes do not change energy levels
Substrate: targeted molecules in enzymatic
Many enzymes named by ending substrate in “-ase”
Enzymes form temporary substrate-enzyme complexes
Enzymes remain unaffected by the reaction they catalyze
Enzymes can’t change a reaction or make other reactions occur
Induced fit: enzyme has to change its shape slightly to accommodate the substrate
Cofactor: factor that help enzymes catalyze reactions (org or inorg)
Examples: temp, pH, relative ratio of enzyme and substrate
Organic cofactors are called coenzymes
Denaturation: enzymes damaged by heat or pH
Regulation: protein’s function at one site is affected by the binding of regulatory molecule to a separate site
Enzymes enable cells to achieve dynamic metabolism - undergo multiple metabolic processes at once
Cannot make an endergonic reaction exergonic
Steps to substrates becoming products
Substrates enters active site, enzyme changes shape
Substrates held in active site by weak interactions (i.e. hydrogen bonds)
Substrates converted to product
Product released
Active site available for more substrate
Rate of enzymatic reaction increases with temperature but too hot means denaturation
Inhibitors fill the active site of enzymes
Some are permanent, some are temporary
Competitive: block substrates from their active sites
Non competitive (allosteric): bind to different part of enzyme, changing the shape of the active site
Allosteric regulation: regulatory molecules interact with enzymes to stimulate or inhibit activity
Enzyme denaturation can be reversible
Cellular Respiration
Steps
Glycolysis
Acetyl co-A reactions
Krebs / citric acid cycle
Oxidative phosphorylation
Brown fat: cells use less efficient energy production method to make heat
Absorption vs action spectrum (broader, cumulative, overall rate of photosynthesis)
Components
Chloroplast
Mesophyll: interior leaf tissue that contains chloroplasts
Pigment: substance that absorbs light
Steps
Light-Dependent Reaction
Light-Independent (Dark) Reaction (Calvin Cycle)
Anaerobic Respiration (Fermentation)
Glycolysis yields 2ATP + 2NADH + 2 Pyruvate
2NADH + 2 Pyruvate yields ethanol and lactate
Regenerates NAD+
Calculations
Calculate products of photosynthesis & cellular respiration
Labs
Enzyme Lab
Peroxidase breaks down peroxides which yields oxygen gas, quantity measured with a dye
Changing variables (i.e. temperature) yields different amounts of oxygen
Photosynthesis Lab
Vacuum in a syringe pulls the oxygen out of leaf disks, no oxygen causes them to sink in bicarbonate solution, bicarbonate is added to give the disks a carbon source for photosynthesis which occurs at different rates under different conditions, making the disks buoyant
Cellular Respiration Lab
Use a respirometer to measure the consumption of oxygen (submerge it in water)
You put cricket/animal in the box that will perform cellular respiration
You put KOH in the box with cricket to absorb the carbon dioxide (product of cellular respiration)-- it will form a solid and not impact your results
Relevant Experiments
Engelmann
Absorption spectra dude with aerobic bacteria
4) Cell Communication & Cell Cycle
Content
Cell Signalling
Quorum sensing: chemical signaling between bacteria
See Bonnie Bassler video
Taxis/Kinesis: movement of an organism in response to a stimulus (chemotaxis is response to chemical)
Ligand: signalling molecule
Receptor: ligands bind to elicit a response
Hydrophobic: cholesterol and other such molecules can diffuse across the plasma membrane
Hydrophilic: ligand-gated ion channels, catalytic receptors, G-protein receptor
Signal Transduction
Process by which an extracellular signal is transmitted to inside of cell
Pathway components
Signal/Ligand
Receptor protein
Relay molecules: second messengers and the phosphorylation cascade
DNA response
Proteins in signal transduction can cause cancer if activated too much (tumor)
RAS: second messenger for growth factor-- suppressed by p53 gene (p53 is protein made by gene) if it gets too much
Response types
Gene expression changes
Cell function
Alter phenotype
Apoptosis- programmed cell death
Cell growth
Secretion of various molecules
Mutations in proteins can cause effects downstream
Pathways are similar and many bacteria emit the same chemical within pathways, evolution!
Feedback
Positive feedback amplifies responses
Onset of childbirth, lactation, fruit ripening
Negative feedback regulates response
Blood sugar (insulin goes down when glucagon goes up), body temperature
Cell cycle
Caused by reproduction, growth, and tissue renewal
Checkpoint: control point that triggers/coordinates events in cell cycle
Mitotic spindle: microtubules and associated proteins
Cytoskeleton partially disassembles to provide the material to make the spindle
Elongates with tubulin
Shortens by dropping subunits
Aster: radial array of short microtubules
Kinetochores on centrosome help microtubules to attach to chromosomes
Broke apart liver cells and realized the significance of the signal transduction pathway, as the membrane and the cytoplasm can’t activate glycogen phosphorylase by themselves
5) Heredity
Content
Types of reproduction
Sexual: two parents, mitosis/meiosis, genetic variation/diversity (and thus higher likelihood of survival in a changing environment)
Asexual: doesn’t require mate, rapid, almost genetically identitical (mutations)
Binary fission (bacteria)
Budding (yeast cells)
Fragmentation (plants and sponges)
Regeneration (starfish, newts, etc.)
Meiosis
One diploid parent cell undergoes two rounds of cell division to produce up to four haploid genetically varied cells
n = 23 in humans, where n is the number of unique chromosomes
Meiosis I
Prophase: synapsis (two chromosome sets come together to form tetrad), chromosomes line up with homologs, crossing over
Metaphase: tetrads line up at metaphase plate, random alignment
Anaphase: tetrad separation, formation at opposite poles, homologs separate with their centromeres intact
Telophase: nuclear membrane forms, two haploid daughter cells form
Meiosis II
Prophase: chromosomes condense
Metaphase: chromosomes line up single file, not pairs, on the metaphase plate
Anaphase: chromosomes split at centromere
Telophase: nuclear membrane forms and 4 total haploid cells are produced
Genetic variation
Crossing over: homologous chromosomes swap genetic material
Independent assortment: homologous chromosomes line up randomly
Random fertilization: random sperm and random egg interact
Gametogenesis
Spermatogenesis: sperm production
Oogenesis: egg cells production (¼ of them degenerate)
Fundamentals of Heredity
Traits: expressed characteristics
Gene: “chunk” of DNA that codes for a specific trait
Homologous chromosomes: two copies of a gene
Alleles: copies of chromosome may differ bc of crossing over
Homozygous/Heterozygous: identical/different
Phenotype: physical representation of genotype
Generations
Parent or P1
Filial or F1
F2
Law of dominance: one trait masks the other one
Complete: one trait completely covers the other one
Incomplete: traits are both expressed
Codominance: traits combine
Law of segregation (Mendel): each gamete gets one copy of a gene
Law of independent assortment (Mendel): traits segregate independently from one another
Locus: location of gene on chromosome
Linked genes: located on the same chromosome, loci less than 50 cM apart
Gene maps and linkage maps
Nondisjunction: inability of chromosomes to separate (ex down syndrome)
Polygenic: many genes influence one phenotype
Pleiotropic: one gene influences many phenotypes
Epistasis: one gene affects another gene
Mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA is inherited maternally
Diseases/Disorders
Genetic:
Tay-Sachs: can’t break down specific lipid in brain
Sickle cell anemia: misshapen RBCs
Color blindness
Hemophilia: lack of clotting factors
Chromosomal:
Turner: only one X chromosome
Klinefelter: XXY chromosomes
Down syndrome (trisomy 21): nondisjunction
Crosses
Sex-linked stuff
Blood type
Barr bodies: in women, two X chromosomes; different chromosomes expressed in different parts of the body, thus creating two different phenotype expressions in different places
Calculations
Pedigree/Punnett Square
Recombination stuff
Recombination rate = # of recombinable offspring/ total offspring (times 100) units: map units
Relevant Experiments
Mendel
6) Gene Expression and Regulation
Content
DNA and RNA Structure
Prokaryotic organisms typically have circular chromosomes
Plasmids = extrachromosomal circular DNA molecules
Purines (G, A) are double-ringed while pyrimidines (C, T, U) have single ring
snRNA - small nuclear RNA (bound to snRNPs - small nuclear ribonucleoproteins)
miRNA - microRNA (regulatory)
DNA Replication
Steps:
Helicase opens up the DNA at the replication fork.
Single-strand binding proteins coat the DNA around the replication fork to prevent rewinding of the DNA.
Topoisomerase works at the region ahead of the replication fork to prevent supercoiling.
Primase synthesizes RNA primers complementary to the DNA strand.
DNA polymerase III extends the primers, adding on to the 3' end, to make the bulk of the new DNA.
RNA primers are removed and replaced with DNA by DNA polymerase I.
The gaps between DNA fragments are sealed by DNA ligase.
Protein Synthesis
61 codons code for amino acids, 3 code as STOP - UAA, UAG, UGA - 64 total
Transcription Steps:
RNA polymerase binds to promoter (before gene) and separate the DNA strands
RNA polymerase fashions a complementary RNA strand from a DNA strand
Coding strand is same as RNA being made, template strand is complementary
Terminator on gene releases the RNA polymerase
RNA Processing Steps (Eukaryotes):
5’ cap and 3’ (poly-A tail, poly A polymerase) tail is added to strand (guanyl transferase)
Splicing of the RNA occurs in which introns are removed and exons are added by spliceosome
Cap/tail adds stability, splicing makes the correct sequence (“gibberish”)
Translation Steps:
Initiation complex is the set up of a ribosome around the beginning of an mRNA fragment
tRNA binds to codon, amino acid is linked to other amino acid
mRNA is shifted over one codon (5’ to 3’)
Stop codon releases mRNA
Gene Expression
Translation of mRNA to a polypeptide occurs on ribosomes in the cytoplasm as well as rough ER
Translation of the mRNA occurs during transcription in prokaryotes
Genetic info in retroviruses is an exception to normal laws: RNA to DNA is possible with reverse transcriptase, which allows the virus to integrate into the host’s DNA
Regulatory sequences = stretches of DNA that interact with regulatory proteins to control transcription
Epigenetic changes can affect expression via mods of DNA or histones
Observable cell differentiation results from the expression of genes for tissue-specific proteins
Induction of transcription factors during dev results in gene expression
Prokaryotes: operons transcribed in a single mRNA molecule, inducible system
Eukaryotes: groups of genes may be influenced by the same transcription factors to coordinate expression
Promoters = DNA sequences that RNA polymerase can latch onto to initiate
Negative regulators inhibit gene expression by binding to DNA and blocking transcription
Acetylation (add acetyl groups)- more loosely wound/ less tightly coiled/compressed
Methylation of DNA (add methyl groups) - less transcription- more tightly wound
Mutation and Genetic Variation
Disruptions in genes (mutations) change phenotypes
Mutations can be +/-/neutral based on their effects that are conferred by the protein formed - environmental context
Errors in DNA replication or repair as well as external factors such as radiation or chemical exposure cause them
Mutations are the primary source of genetic variation
Horizontal acquisition in prokaryotes - transformation (uptake of naked DNA), transduction (viral DNA transmission), conjugation (cell-cell DNA transfer), and transposition (DNA moved within/between molecules) - increase variation
Related viruses can (re)combine genetic material in the same host cell
Types of mutations: frameshift, deletion, insertion
Genetic Engineering
Electrophoresis separates molecules by size and charge
PCR magnifies DNA fragments
Bacterial transformation introduces DNA into bacterial cells
Operons
Almost always prokaryotic
Promoter region has operator in it
Structural genes follow promoter
Terminator ends operon
Regulatory protein is active repressor
Active repressor can be inactivated
Enhancer: remote gene that require activators
RNAi: interference with miRNA
Anabolic pathways are normally on and catabolic pathways are normally off
Calculations
Transformation efficiency (colonies/DNA)
Numbers of base pairs (fragment lengths)
Cutting enzymes in a plasmid or something (finding the lengths of each section)
Labs
Gel Electrophoresis Lab
Phosphates in DNA make it negative (even though it’s an acid!), so it moves to positive terminal on the board
Smaller DNA is quicc, compare it to a standard to calculate approx. lengths
Bacterial Transformation Lab
Purpose of sugar: arabinose is a promoter which controls the GFP in transformed cells, turns it on, also green under UV
Purpose of flipping upside down: condensation forms but doesn’t drip down
Purpose of heat shock: increases bacterial uptake of foreign DNA
Plasmids have GFP (green fluorescent protein) and ampicillin resistance genes
Calcium solution puts holes in bacteria to allow for uptake of plasmids
PCR Lab
DNA + primers + nucleotides + DNA polymerase in a specialized PCR tube in a thermal cycler
Primers bind to DNA before it can repair itself, DNA polymerase binds to the primers and begins replication
After 30 cycles, there are billions of target sequences
Relevant Experiments
Avery: harmful + harmless bacteria in mice, experimented with proteins vs DNA of bacteria
Griffith: Avery’s w/o DNA vs protein
Hershey and Chase: radioactively labeled DNA and protein
Melson and Stahl: isotopic nitrogen in bacteria, looked for cons/semi/dispersive DNA
Beadle and Tatum: changed medium’s amino acid components to find that a metabolic pathway was responsible for turning specific proteins into other proteins, “one gene one enzyme”
Nirenberg: discovered codon table
7) Natural Selection
Scientific Theory: no refuting evidence (observation + experimentation), time, explain a brand/extensive range of phenomena
Theory of Natural Selection
Definition
Not all offspring (in a population) will survive
Variation among individuals in a population
Some variations were more favourable than others in a particular environment
Those with more favourable variations were more likely to survive and reproduce.
These favourable variations were passed on and increased in frequency over time.
Types of Selection:
Directional selection: one phenotype favored at one of the extremes of the normal distribution
”Weeds out” one phenotype
Ony can happen if a favored allele is already present
Stabilizing Selection: Organisms within a population are eliminated with extreme traits
Favors “average” or medium traits
Ex. big head causes a difficult delivery; small had causes health deficits
Disruptive Selection: favors both extremes and selects against common traits
Ex. sexual selection (seems like directional but it’s not because it only affects one sex, if graph is only males then directional)
Competition for limited resources results in differential survival, favourable phenotypes are more likely to survive and produce more offspring, thus passing traits to subsequent generations.
Biotic and abiotic environments can be more or less stable/fluctuating, and this affects the rate and direction of evolution
Convergent evolution occurs when similar selective pressures result in similar phenotypic adaptations in different populations or species.
Divergent evolution: groups from common ancestor evolve, homology
Different genetic variations can be selected in each generation.
Environments change and apply selective pressures to populations.
Evolutionary fitness is measured by reproductive success.
Natural selection acts on phenotypic variations in populations.
Some phenotypic variations significantly increase or decrease the fitness of the organism in particular environments.
Through artificial selection, humans affect variation in other species.
Humans choose to cause artificial selection with specific traits, accidental selection caused by humans is not artificial
Random occurrences
Mutation
Genetic drift - change in existing allele frequency
Migration
Reduction of genetic variation within a given population can increase the differences between populations of the same species.
Conditions for a population or an allele to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are
Large population size
Absence of migration
No net mutations
Random mating
Absence of selection
Changes in allele frequencies provide evidence for the occurrence of evolution in a population.
Small populations are more susceptible to random environmental impact than large populations.
Gene flow: transference of genes/alleles between populations
Speciation: one species splits off into multiple species
Sympatric (living together i.e. disruption) Allopatric (physically separate, i.e. founder effect) Parapatric (habitats overlapping)
Polyploidy (autopolyploidy), sexual selection
Species: group of populations whose members can interbreed and produce healthy, fertile offspring but can’t breed with other species (ex. a horse and donkey can produce a mule but a mule is nonviable, so it doesn’t qualify)
Morphological definition: body shape and structural characteristics define a species
Ecological species definition: way populations interact with their environments define a species
Phylogenetic species definition: smallest group that shares a common ancestor is a species
Prezygotic barriers: barriers to reproduction before zygote is formed
Geographical error: two organisms are in different areas
Behavioural error (i.e. mating rituals aren’t the same)
Mechanical error: “the pieces don’t fit together”
Temporal error (i.e. one organism comes out at night while the other comes out in the day)
Zygotic/Gametic isolation: sperm and egg don’t physically meet
Postzygotic barriers: barriers to reproduction after zygote is formed
Hybrid viability: developmental errors of offspring
Hybrid fertility: organism is sterilized
Hybrid breakdown: offspring over generations aren’t healthy
Hybrid zone: region in which members of different species meet and mate
Reinforcement: hybrids less fit than parents, die off, strength prezygotic barriers
Fusion: two species may merge into one population
Stability: stable hybrid zones mean hybrids are more fit than parents, thus creating a stable population, but can be selected against in hybrid zones as well
Punctuated equilibria: long periods of no or little change evolutionarily punctuated by short periods of large change, gradualism is just slow evolution
Evidence of evolution
Paleontology (Fossils)
Comparative Anatomy
Embryology: embryos look the same as they grow
Biogeography: distribution of flora and fauna in the environment (pangea!)
Biochemical: DNA and proteins and stuff, also glycolysis
Phylogenetic trees
Monophyletic: common ancestor and all descendants
Polyphyletic: descendants with different ancestors
Paraphyletic: leaving specifies out of group
Out group: basal taxon, doesn’t have traits others do
Cline: graded variation within species (i.e. different stem heights based on altitude)
Anagenesis: one species turning into another species
Cladogenesis: one species turning into multiple species
Taxon: classification/grouping
Clade: group of species with common ancestor
Horizontal gene transfer: genes thrown between bacteria
Shared derived characters: unique to specific group
Shared primitive/ancestral characters: not unique to a specific group but is shared within group
Origins of life
Stages
Inorganic formation of organic monomers (miller-urey experiment)
Inorganic formation of organic polymers (catalytic surfaces like hot rock or sand)
Protobionts and compartmentalization (liposomes, micelles)
DNA evolution (RNA functions as enzyme)
Shared evolutionary characteristics across all domains
Membranes
Cell comm.
Gene to protein
DNA
Proteins
Extant = not extinct
Highly conserved genes = low rates of mutation in history due to criticalness (like electron transport chain)
Molecular clock: dating evolution using DNA evidence
Extinction causes niches for species to fill
Eukaryotes all have common ancestor (shown by membrane-bound organelles, linear chromosomes, and introns)
Calculations
Hardy-Weinberg
p + q = 1
p^2 + 2pq +q^2 = 1
Chi Squared
Labs
Artificial Selection Lab
Trichrome trait hairs
Anthocyanin for second trait (purple stems)
Function of the purple pigment?
Function of trichome hairs?
BLAST Lab
Putting nucleotides into a database outputs similar genes
Relevant Experiments
Darwin
Lamarck
Miller-Urey
Slapped some water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen is some flasks and simulated early earth with heat and stuff and it made some amino acids.
How Many People Actually Followed Chad? Digging through the Mormon gossip...
I've been reading all the threads about AVOW, Julie Rowe, Prepper etc on exmormon (incidentally, these threads are a hell of a read) and led me to an LDS forum, where they've been talking about Chad et al for years. One thing I learned that I hadn't read before was that Chad's forum on AVOW was a forum-with-a-forum, that also charged a subscription fee of $5. It was ran by "The Visionaries"--Chad himself, Hector Sosa, and Julie Rowe. All criticism of these three was strictly forbidden by site owner Christopher Parrett. Here's one comment I found interesting "I was left AVOW when my subscription lapsed in February. I did not subscribe to the GRI newsletter. I can tell you I was getting or still get emails to join. It seemed for the emails the would put out a partial prophecy a week. The group involved was Julie Rowe, Hector Sosa, and Chad Daybell. They called themselves visionaries. They claimed that the prophets would come to them for answers during the tribulations. They were protected by the owner of AVOW Christopher Parrett and no one could say anything against the three or they would be kicked off AVOW. Chad spoke about the call out and New Jerusalem mostly from the teaser emails I would get each week. The problem with the visionaries is they would not tell you or predict what would happen next conference. Their prediction rate of getting things right in the future was abysmal." And "Yes, I believe Christopher promoted a splinter group religion with teachings not supported by the church. Some people call it a cult. You were not allowed to speak against their visionaries, Chad, Julie, or Hector who claim the prophet would be coming to them to know what to do during the tribulations. I am not sure Christopher believed their weekly visions, but he was willing to make 5 dollars extra to promote their teachings." Here's a post shared on the forum from Nov 19, before the welfare check was called. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cLzA4aWV2X0krFxey497WIFYP90mjosW/view I have NO idea what this poster's backstory is, but based on context clues, I'm pretty sure "the pages" refers to the 116 "lost pages" of the Book of Mormon--what he has to say is pretty wild. "This just makes good sense! If you're gonna knock off your Wife, predict her death first. This has the effect of quadrupling book sales, at least. Ramp up the TV and movie rights by molesting and killing the kids, and there's a ton of money in this! Michael and Nancy can handle the videography, and Keith should be able to handle the publicity, right? Feels kinda creepy knowing I've had these people in my home, most at the same time.
Lisa and Rod (OP NOTE: Must be Rod Meldrum) while they were trying to steal the textual contents of the papers, and...
Michael and Nancy (OP NOTE this is Preparing the People folks) were booking auditoriums so they could get me to tell a bunch of lies for them, to a bunch of people, for a bunch of money, and...
Chad and Julie (Chode and Julie Rowe) were trying to get me to let them write a book about the whole thing (which included very few actual facts), and...
Jonathan (OP NOTE, still can't figure out who he is) was trying to get one of his child-molester friends to help find me a job so I'd give them to him for his collection, and...
Shawn (OP Note: This must be Shawn Littlebear) knew the location of a golden walled cavern which has portals to other dimensions, but requires the sacrifice of a virgin (male or female, doesn't matter) to gain 'crossover rights'. That cave also has the "116 pages", but they're in golden leafed notebooks, which he wanted to compare to the sheets I had control of to see if they are the same....
...just about everyone on LDSFF was trashing me for having found them, when all I wanted to do was get rid of them ASAP. Seems like almost all of you had your sights on the wrong targets (IOW, a very few of you shook the right tree, but the nuts are just now started to fall out - sorry, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of gloating). LOL I just checked my old emails (some 2.000+) on this matter and if the whole story's not in there I'd be surprised. I'm pretty sure I've exchanged emails with the person who took those kids, and probably killed one or more of the dead spouses involved. Pay attention in April, folks. I'll be gloating a lot more after that...." Another rather alarming quote "I see these people that are falling all over the dreams and visions people as a doomsday cult forming inside the Mormon church. The things these people are doing and preparing for are beyond excessive. Seriously, every week there’s some new prediction on AVOW that has everyone riled up. Yet, the masters of all this nonsense are so good at stroking egos. Telling everyone they are the chosen ones and special and the only ones who really see and understand. [Reminds me of some on LDSFF, too...] As the leaders of those kind of groups continuously fleece them. I mean you can’t even read the visions unless you pay even more, cause that’s not money changerish at all. No. But the worst thing about this doomsday cult is their naive acceptance of anything supernatural being from God, and therefore good. Because of this they are accepting blatant false doctrine from false visionaries (Spencer, Hector, Julie, etc. along with ANY NDE they read, They are accepting New Age Antichrist doctrine that ranges from subtle to blatant. They are being taught to look for the Antichrist and not the real Christ. They are accepting Energy Healing, and using the Priesthood in ways not taught in church. It’s extremely frightening where this fear mongering and naivete have lead." I have to stop reading this stuff and go to bed, but this Facebook link was posted and it clarifies A LOT. https://www.facebook.com/1557462021236368/posts/2504032356579325/ here are a couple of highlights "All during this time, a member of AVOW, who went by the avatar “fellowdreamer”, began to post her “visions” on AVOW. She would corroborate things like the call-out, and things in Visions of Glory and say she too had the same visions. She would also rip things out of the headlines and claim that she saw that as well. Fellowdreamer intrigued Chad Daybell, who got in contact with her, and together they wrote her NDE . Fellowdreamer is a woman named Julie Rowe. Her first NDE is called A Greater Tomorrow. Her book began very popular, not just among member of AVOW, but it spread all over LDS Facebook groups. People were giving copies of her book when they went visiting teaching (it was still VT back then). They gave copies to all their family members." "There is so many heads in this hydra. You have a man named Avraham Gileadi who is a wannabe church scholar and has spread the idea that there will be a latter-day Davidic servant who will come from outside the church leadership to set things straight. There’s a man named Shawn Littlebear who claims to be the one who can bring the Book of Lehi from his native tribe to the church, as well as bring the Ark of the covenant from its hiding place to the new temple of Jerusalem thanks to his special bloodline and callings. Then we get to MIke Stroud, who was excommunicated last year. He is a retired Seminary teacher who also is a believer of the Snuffer Doctrines of how to gain your calling and election and being personally taught by Christ Himself. And that when this happens, he claims you become a translated being and one of the 144,000 spoken of in revelation 7. He also teaches that men need to use their priesthood more fully so they can open portals for travel and command the elements. He teaches a deliverance doctrine. That all sickness, physical or mental issue is because you are possessed. So to heal he was teaching men to give what he called “quorum blessings”, which which is a group of four men who are fully using their priesthood and “aware” and to cast the demons out and then pronounce healing upon people. Stroud is also a huge believer in the book Visions of Glory. Stroud started a podcast where he taught his interpretation of the Book of Mormon from the stance of his Snuffer and Spencer beliefs. He also teaches that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a telestial church and that when you get your calling and election via his methods, then you are entering a terrestrial church, which is called The Church of the Firstborn. This is not an actual church among these groups, but more a title and status symbol. If you look at Stroud’s teachings they are very much in line with the things we now know Lori Vallow believed it. There are many other people in these circles we could talk about. But this just gives you an idea about the many heads within these circles." I like this quote because it gives some context about what the fuck Melanie Gibb was talking about at the end of the Dateline interview "After reading a PaP course on how to have visions and visionary dreams, they will use people such as Korihor, a Book of Mormon antichrist, to compare to those who don’t believe in their dreams. They use a LOT of out of context scripture and church leader quotes, which they will redefine words of (like meditation for example. They use quotes talking about how great mediation is, but then define this as the same thing as eastern meditation, which it is not.), and they set the definition of the idea spoken of. It’s pretty insidious when you look at it. They also will name or calling drop to make what they do look more legit." So in conclusion? I think there are a lot more people following Chad Daybell and ALSO completely invested in Stroud's teaching (which seems to be the starting point for Lori and Chad's crazier claims) then a handful. I would LOVE to get access to the Secret Chad Daybell Forum. I bet that shit is wild.
Front Row Second Row Third Row Storage Row 1 , L to R Mäurer & Wirtz – 4711 – While this is the aftershave version of this frag, it’s very comparable to the actual EDC. It’s inexpensive, and has a nice, light, fresh smell to it that is perfect for getting out of the shower. For someone looking for a classic citrus scent without breaking the bank, this is a great option. The EDC is a better performing version of this, and has a very storied history. Viktorinox – Swiss Army – I still have one of my bottles of this that I got when I was in high school, some 20 years ago (the fake metal sleeve fell off years ago). This was my go-to frag, year-round, as I really didn’t get the whole “seasonal” thing back then, I just understood that girls complimented this frag, and that was all I needed. I recently saw a bottle for sale for $20, so I grabbed it for the fun of it. It still smells just like the original formula, but I feel like I’ve aged out of this scent, so I’ll probably give it to a nephew in a few years’ time. Viktor and Rolf – Spice Bomb – When I ordered some online fragrances, I was given a sample of this bad boy. I held on to it for a while, and one day, decided I’d try it on before going out for dinner. I was absolutely blown away, and shortly after, ordered a bottle. For a perfumer I had never heard of, they really made a fantastic first impression, and I’ll likely grab another offering of theirs this year. Ferrari – Black – A frag I purchased when I was in college at a bargain. It has a very synthetic feeling to it, but at the end of the day, it smells great. I’m not sure if this is the same Frag as Scuderia Black that came out afterwards, but if you are on a budget, I wouldn’t be afraid of giving this frag a shot. Ferrari – Scuderia Red – A few years after purchasing Ferrari Black, I found this one on sale for under $20 CAD. I figured it was worth the gamble. At first, I was incredible unimpressed by this. The scent, how long it lasted, it’s projection, all incredibly weak. There is nothing “bad” about the smell, it just has no performance. That said, I’ve come to appreciate this more as a “home alone” fragrance, when I’m just sitting on my couch, playing video games, or watching TV, it’s a nice little scent that every once in a while, will remind you it is there. I actually decided to wear this one today while I wrote this. Taylor of Old Bond Street – Jermyn Street Collection – This is one that I’m sure will raise a few eyebrows to everyone not in the wet shaving community. I first came across this when I purchased it as a shaving soap, and I have to say, this is one of the first scents I ever truly fell in love with, and is probably responsible for me being the fraghead that I am today. When ToBS released this frag as an EDC, I had to get it. Nothing smells so sweet, yet so masculine, while not being overbearing. The fact that it is alcohol free is really nice for those with sensitive skin. Taylor of Old Bond Street – No. 74 Original – This is the “barbershop” scent. It’s musky, but with enough citrus in it to give it that really “fresh and clean” profile. I absolutely love throwing this on after shaving, before crawling in bed. Just a quick splash on the palms, and a slap on the face, and it smells like you just got out of a barbershop that offers wet shaves and a hot towel. Hugo Boss – Tonic - Not a huge fan of this one. It’s projection and longevity are among the weakest I own, which is really disappointing because it’s such a nice scent, that you really can’t share with anyone. It’s become another “home alone” frag. Rarely used, rarely appreciated. Hugo Boss – Hugo – I heard time and time again, how “fresh” and “green” this fragrance is, but I just don’t see it. It feels heavy, thick, and strong. None of these things are attributes I would attribute to a summer fragrance. I tend to wear this in the autumn, on evenings, when I won’t be in tight quarters. I feel it is too overwhelming for me to even wear to work. While I don’t actively dislike this fragrance, it certainly didn’t live up to the hype I had going into it, so that disappointment negatively effects my opinion of it. Row 2, L to R Tom Ford – Extreme – If anything could be my winter fragrance for the rest of my life, it would be this. It was a “limited edition” fragrance, which really breaks my heart. Knowing that in the not too distant future, any hope of finding bottles of this will be gone, is something I don’t like thinking about, but crosses my mind whenever I look at this bottle. I have maybe half a dozen sprays left in it, and I can’t bear myself to use them. This is a cry for help, people, sell me your TF Extreme. Tom Ford – Extreme Noir – This was bought out of desperation in hopes that it would be reminiscent of TF Extreme. It is not. That said, it’s a nice cologne, perfect for fall, and has enough performance to get compliments, without being overbearing to those exposed to you for a long period. For under $200 CAD, it’s a decent purchase for rounding out a collection. Penhaligon’s – Vaara - I bought this for me, based on previous offerings by Bertrand Duchaufour. It was marketed as being designed for the Maharaja of India, but after smelling it, decided it was a bit too floral and feminine, so I gave it to my wife. That said, I paid for it, I’m whoring it out for karma. I can’t really agree with this assertion that this is a unisex frag, but, I’m from Canada, and I’m of Scottish descent, where smelling like roses and peonies is not traditionally tied to masculinity. Sorry India. Penhaligon’s – Esprit Du Roi – If any frag in my collection needed more projection, it’s this one. While the scent is light, clean, and fresh, it has such poor performance that you might as well not be wearing anything at all. I bought this one for under $100 CAD, as the person that had originally ordered it didn’t like it, and since it was a Bertrand Duchaufour development, I bought it blind. I like to wear this one to work during the fall, as it doesn’t overwhelm the office, but is still nice enough to make more forget I work in the industrial sector. Penhaligon’s – Sartorial – I absolutely adore this frag. It is my go-to social fragrance in the spring and fall and were I to only have 4 frags for the rest of my life, Sartorial would be there. This was the first of Bertrand Duchaufour frags that I had tried, and it cemented him with the top perfumers in the industry, IMO. I could really go on for days about this fragrance, but I’m only halfway done reviewing the collection, and we’re already approaching 1,200 words. Creed – Royal Oud – “Oh, that’s why it costs so much” were the first words that came out of my mouth after smelling the sampler I ordered. This frag is simply beautiful, luxurious, powerful and it embodies the very best that woody fragrances have to offer. I bit the bullet and bought this frag when I found it for under $200 CAD, and in hindsight, should have bought 2 bottles, as I doubt I’ll find that deal again. Creed – Green Irish Tweed – Before travelling to Vegas a few years ago, I purchased 5 samplers of Creed that would serve as my frags while I was there and GIT was the one that stood out the most. It was so reminiscent of a meadow, I was certain I could even pick out the manure in the field. Green Irish Tweed, and Creed in general, really know how to separate themselves from the rest. This frag can thrive in pretty much any setting. Acqua Di Parma – Colonia Club – I’d call this fragrance classic, but the recipe is only 5 years old. I purchased this blind, on the back of ADP Colonia, and was pleased with my gamble. It’s a perfect frag for spring and summer, but I feel it is best for night, and not day, as the muskiness comes off a little strong in the heat. It is nowhere near as nice as regular “Colonia”, but is unique enough in its own right. Acqua Di Parma – Colonia – A “true classic”. Honestly, when you turn 18, the ghost of Cary Grant should appear in your dreams, instructing you to aspire to smell as good as him. I first came across this scent when I was in Disneyland, where they have a little shop in New Orleans Square. We had been there all most of the day at that point, and the frag I was wearing that day had worn off, so I sampled Colonia and was blown away. That said, I wasn’t going to pay Disney prices for cologne, and ordered a bottle when I got home. It has since been one of my “go-to” work frags, as it’s no so powerful that it takes over the office, not so feminine that it smells like I “crawled out of a whores den” as our office accountant so eloquently puts it, and is classy enough that regardless of who I’m meeting with, I’ll always smell like I belong. I’ve mentioned only having 4 frags for the rest of my life, this would easily be one of them. Row 3, L to R Burberry – Weekend – Meh, solidly meh. I bought this blind, on sale for under $20 CAD and I think I might have actually been ripped off. It’s overwhelmingly citrus, but handled comparatively poorly to other similarly priced frags like 4711. It’s weak, it has no projection, and smells just as cheap as it was priced. I prefer using the term inexpensive when it comes to most items, but this? This is cheap, and not even part of the “home alone” category. This is one I would actively get rid of. Tommy Hilfiger – Tommy – Another “meh” fragrance purchased blindly on sale for south of $20 CAD. You’d think at this point, I’d have learned my lesson, but alas, here we are with yet another disappointing offering. It’s another citrus frag, but this time, it’s not cheap smelling, it’s generic, and not in a “classic” way. I’m sure if I wore this when I was younger, I might have a fonder appreciation of it, but as it stands, it’s just another underperformer that I’d get rid of in a heartbeat. Ralph Lauren – Polo – This was a gift from a family member, and frags like Polo Green are among my least favourite. I find them heavy, oppressive, offensive, and strong. They overwhelm the senses, and do not offer anything in the way of delicacy. A lot of people will call this a prime example of masculine scent, to me, that man is an octogenarian that lost his sense of smell 25 years ago. I would actively get rid of this cologne. Antonio Puig – Quorum – This is another gift from a family member and everything I used to describe Ralph Lauren’s Polo Green can be used here. It smells far too “masculine”, and it’s like its demographic is the Venn Diagram where the circles of “manly man”, “man who wears cologne”, and “man who refuses to pay more than $20 for a bottle of cologne” meet. I would actively get rid of this cologne. Montblanc – Legend – I actually really like this one, so don’t think the back row is just ones I’m trying to get rid of! Whereas “Polo”, “Quorom”, and you’ll later see Lagerfeld’s “Photo” are too “masculine” for my tastes, this one offers a bit more complexity. The citrus is offset by the smokiness, the musk, by the floral nature, it performs incredibly well, and does not overwhelm the senses like a lot of other traditionally male frags. I don’t wear it very often, but when I do, I appreciate it. Karl Lagerfeld – Photo – Another gift, this one from well over a decade ago. I do not care for this fragrance at all. It’s guilty of everything that Polo Green and Quorum are, except this one has had the good graces to appreciate in value since it was gifted to me. On ebay, bottles are going for north of $250 CAD, so this is definitely one I’d like to trade or sell to someone that actually appreciates what this frag has to offer. I’d sooner spend that money on a bottle of Silver Mountain Water or Blenheim Bouquet. Armani – Mania – This was my signature scent through college, I just could not get enough of it. Bought several bottles at duty free years ago and this is the last of it. I’ve had this full bottle for over a decade now, and while I never wear it anymore, I don’t see myself getting rid of what I would consider a big part of my late teens/early twenties. It’s nice to smell it every now and again just for the nostalgia, even if I’ve “aged out” of it. Armani – Code – I bought this blind on vacation when I finished college at a duty free shop as part of some package that came with a roll on deodorant. I like the frag, even if it is heavily synthetic in nature. It’s a wonderful frag for cool nights and sunny winter days, as the hints of citrus and floral notes are well blended in with it’s heavier, more masculine woody and smokey characteristics. I don’t know whether I’ll buy another bottle of this when it is done, as I feel it is a bit too juvenile and synthetic for a man my age. Armani – Acqua Di Gio – My first ever fragrance, given to me as a graduation present for grade 6. This is an original bottle from it’s launch in 1996 that I use only for the most special of summer occasions. I’m not sure what they have done to the formula of this since then, but it is but a shadow of its former self. I have bought bottles of this since and have been really disappointed not only in the scent, but its performance as well. It used to be thick, like a humid summer day, now? It’s a lot like sex in a canoe, in that it is fucking close to water. This was the first time I realized that fragrance formulas change over time, and I’m glad I got the lesson. Armani - Armani Eau Pour Homme – My second ever fragrance, given to me as a graduation present for graduating grade 8. I didn’t care for this one as much as I did ADG, but over time, it has really grown on me. Due to sentimental reasons, I only wear this one on special occasions, not that it’s an exceptionally rare frag, just one that has a lot of nostalgia for me. This frag does the whole “citrus and aromatic” thing that so many others try to do, but doesn’t have the ham-fisted approach that I would attribute to its competitors.
I've heard the claim a number of times that "the origins of the word 'church' point to a place of worship." On askRPC a user asked if it's a biblical command to attend a weekly service. Other similar issues arise frequently, so let's talk about this. "Church" is NOT Derived from Ekklesia You heard me right. "Church" is one of the translations we have given to the word Ekklesia, but that's not the etymological root. The word we derived "church" from is actually German: Kirche. Some suggest that this may have come from the ancient Greek Kuriakon (or sometimes conjugated Kuriakos).
Kirche in the German referenced a building or location.
Kuriakon in the Greek generally means "belonging to a lord."
It's not hard to see how some people would confuse the location of the church with something belonging to God. After all, even the Jews before the cross understood the notion of devoting land and property to God (Mark 7:9-13, for example). That said, anyone looking at the two can obviously see that the two words split significantly in their definitions and historical use. The latter is only used twice in the Bible, and never as a reference to the church. The first is in 1 Cor. 11:20 regarding eating "the Lord's supper." The other is in Revelation 1:10, referencing "the Lord's day." Note, of course, the comparison with Kyrios (sometimes Kurios), which is the Greek for "lord" and often used to reference Jesus throughout most of the epistles. The Original Ekklesia When talking about the Church, there are two Greek words that are translated as such: Ekklesia and Koinonia. Koinonia is the word used to describe the spiritual connectivity of the Church. It is generally used to reference a oneness bond existing throughout a group. It's where we get the word "communion" from, as the KJV translated it that way and the word stuck. During "communion" we share a oneness with Christ. In the same way, Koinonia references, on occasion, the oneness that exists among a body of believers - that we are united in Christ, despite being different members of a singular body. Ekklesia (or Ecclesia) is the word used to describe the structure of the church. It had an established meaning in the Greek language. While "church" to us seems like a uniquely religious word that predominantly applies to Christians, that wasn't the case for Ekklesia in the Greek language that most of the new testament was written in. It was a commonly understood term for a political (arguably military) structure. There are councils, senates, committees, ekklesias, and so on.
Thought Experiment 1: Imagine this: in general life among your Christian friends, instead of the church the translation was "senate" and that's the word we used regularly. How would that change your perception of things? "Sorry, I can't hang out on Sunday because I have a Senate meeting." "I love my Senate." "You should go to Senate more often." "The Senate is Christ's bride." This has a massively different connotation to what we understand about the Church today, right? This is how the Greek-speaking population would have read the word - understanding, of course, that the reference was to the spiritual Kingdom, not the physical body that met in Athens.
The original ekklesia was a fascinating event, arising even before Daniel's time, meeting as early as 621BC. The Greek Empire in those days had a form of democracy that involved a popular assembly called an Ekklesia. A few relevant details:
There were not many Ekklesias. There was only one. It referred to a unified assembly of the entire Kingdom, and not merely individual local assemblies throughout the Kingdom (which also existed by different names).
It was not only comprised of willing participants of the entirety of the Kingdom; all people in the Kingdom were bound by it! ... even if they were not present or did not agree (i.e. were in the voting minority).
It was not a mandatory meeting. While attendance was encouraged, there was no expectation of attendance.
A quorum of no less than 6,000 people had to participate in any votes or else it was rendered moot or the meeting would be cancelled.
To encourage attendance, a per diem was given to all who participated: 1.5 drachma for special ekklesias and 1 for the ordinary. A drachma was roughly a day's wages.
It focused not on teaching the attendees how to be "good little boys and girls." Rather, it was viewed as a business meeting. The people voted on issues related to Kingdom expansion - do we go to war? Send a diplomatic envoy to a neighboring Kingdom? Shall we ratify a treaty? Who do we appoint to keep rebels and criminals from destroying the country from within?
This one's the must humorous to me: it met outside on a plain and not in a building.
I do not believe that in borrowing the word, Jesus or the apostles necessarily intended us to model the Greek structure of the Ekklesia exactly. Rather, I believe they were intending to convey, "Hi all you Greek-speakers. You remember those Ekklesia meetings you've been having all these years? Well, what I'm referring to is kind of like that, but based on the way Christ set it up rather than the way the Greeks set it up." This is pretty much the same thing Paul did in Acts 17 when preaching the Gospel with reference to the "unknown god" statute in Athens - find something not necessarily identical, but close enough that it conveys the point, while giving room for preaching God's intentions through that vehicle. That said, I do believe the functional nature of the Ekklesia was part of the connection Jesus and the apostles were trying to make.
Thought Experiment 2: Imagine if instead of the Ekklesia Jesus referred to our modern Congress, which is probably the closest thing we have to the Greek Ekklesia in America (with some significant differences). Now, consider the function and structure that this word-association would generate today. Can you imagine being told to build a Congress for the Church and instead coming up with the local congregational structure we now have and calling that our "congress"? Of course not. Virtually everyone alive today would know that what we do is neither structurally nor functionally anything like the American Congress from which the word would have been borrowed. In the same way, I'm confident that anyone alive in Jesus's day would look at our modern structure and say, "That's not an Ekklesia. You all are crazy."
Now, I've already noted that it's not meant to be a perfect comparison. Christ's Ekklesia is certainly distinct in many ways from the Greek ekklesia. But if we strip away our modern notions of the word "church" and, instead, place ourselves in the shoes of a brand new believer in the apostles' day who knew nothing about what Jesus taught and hadn't read the epistles and only heard that there was an ecclesia of Christ, here's what one might assume about it:
The Church should meet corporately and universally, not only locally and divided (if it would meet locally/divided at all).
There should be a singular, united structure for the Church, not numerous branches/denominations.
The Church should not be tied to or associated with a building or location, but understood as the assembly of the people, meeting wherever is convenient.
The purpose of the meeting is to decide matters of policy and vote on military matters, primarily affecting Kingdom expansion.
There would be no expectation of teaching on how to be "good little boys and girls" (which would have been taught by discipler-makers within the Church).
It would include appointing magistrates to judge and condemn those who would internally present a threat to the Kingdom, such as through promoting heresies.
It would discuss policies on what types of bridges/treaties to build with those outside the Kingdom (i.e. the intermingling of "church and state").
It would financially provide to the attendees rather than be a financial drain on them.
Now, I'm not suggesting the Church should incorporate all of these things. Again, this is just a picture of what someone in that day may have imagined based on that word alone. But it does get our brains realizing that we are WAAAY more unlike the Greek ekklesia than we are like to it. Ekklesia Participation Here's another fascinating point: the Ekklesia had restrictions on who could attend, speak, participate in votes, etc. It was limited to every (a) free, (b) native, (c) adult, (d) male (e) citizen in the entire empire was invited to attend and vote on certain issues. Consider these requirements in light of what we see in Scripture about participation within the Church. It would be limited to those who were
(a) free - not enslaved by sin
(b) native - born ("again" in the John 3 sense) into the Kingdom
(c) adult - spiritually mature
(d) male - i.e. not women
(e) citizen - i.e. primary allegiance is to the Kingdom, not another country.
Interestingly, I could point to a number of Scriptural passages that would imply that this is the framework the apostles had for how the Church should be run, at least from a leadership, decision-making standpoint. CONCLUSION While the Greek ekklesia is not a perfect parallel to what Jesus and the apostles were building, that word was chosen over other structures at the time that would have been more alike to what we see in churchianity today. This tells me that Jesus and the apostles had a more Kingdom-building understanding of what the Ekklesia of Christ. While I won't conclude the parallels should all apply, what I AM willing to conclude from this is that the Church is not meant to be a place for people to come, hear a nice little lesson, ponder a quotable phrase for a few hours, and get on with their week. It's meant to be a strategy and planning session for how we get the Gospel out to the world - which is how the war will be won.
The Purpose of Temples and Their Rituals and How I Would Change Them, Part 2: Examining the Purpose
I'm going to be talking about temples, including some details of the ceremonies. If you're not interested in reading about these, I'd suggest you stop reading. Other parts in this Series: Part 1: History of Temples Part 2: Examining the Purpose Part 3: The Changes Part 4: Conclusion In the previous part of this series I touched on sects that have temples; sects that have rituals/ordinances like the Initiatories & Endowments & sealings & work for the dead and a brief overview how they have changed over time. I left the post off with a list of questions. I will repeat the list again, and then examine each question individually and give my opinion on the matter.
What is the point of a temple if there is a precedent for performing practically every ritual/ordinance without them?
If the fundamental covenants and rituals/ordinances of the temple can change, what exactly is their point?
If the temple rituals can be changed or removed, could it change again in other fundamental ways to exclude outdated ideas and beliefs?
Who has the authority to change the ceremonies and how often should they be allowed to change?
If God used 19th century techniques to communicate covenants in the Endowment ceremony, why can't 21st century techniques be used today? What would the Endowment and the temple look like if there wasn't a masonic influence?
1. What is the point of a temple if there is a precedent for performing practically every ritual/ordinance without them? I think having a place set aside solely for reflection and meditation, teaching and learning, cultural development and community building, traditional rituals, choirs and concerts, art galleries, dances, and potlucks is a pretty common human phenomenon. To me, that is what the temple should be. The temple should be an epicenter for everything Mormon and be open to everyone. In addition the temple should not be ridiculously ornate. King Noah's temple was singled out for being extravagantly decorated and it is implied that this is a very negative thing. Most temples within the Mormon tradition are very beautiful, but that beauty comes at a pretty high price, which I think is a practice that should be discontinued. 2. If the fundamental covenants and rituals/ordinances of the temple can change, what exactly is their point? I think this question requires us to not only look at what these rituals really mean to us as a community, but what rituals mean to humanity as a whole.PhD of religious studies Andrew Henry of the youtube channel “Religion for Breakfast”has an episode entitled “What is Ritual?” that gives a pretty decent look into what ritual is and what its purpose is. In short, he theorizes that ritual is an assertion of difference from the ordinary; it is the framing of the actions, not the actions themselves, that makes them rituals. He gave the example of the sacrament: sipping water doesn’t inherently have anything ritualistic qualities to it, but when you organize with others in a special place at a set time and say special words, sipping water can become a ritual. The next natural question is “Why do we have ritual?” Abigail Brenner M.D. wrote an article in "Psychology Today" which seeks to answer these questions in an easy to understand way. Her article "10 Ways Rituals Help Us Celebrate Our Lives” is a quick and easy read, which is why I won't repeat the whole list. However, the things that stuck out to me the most about the purpose of ritual is to interrupt the ordinary flow of life, provide a communal sense of belonging, celebrate the passage of time, celebrate a coming of age, mark a commitment, and/or provide a sense of renewal. So, in short, a ritual is a certain set of actions that can mark certain occasions and commitments or invoke certain emotions. With this definition in mind, let’s examine what these could mean for the temples’ ceremonies. The Baptisms for the Dead is usually the first temple ceremony people participate in. The purpose of this could be seen as connecting you to the past; being a part of a bigger picture. I personally don’t see much value in doing proxy work for the dead, as rituals are for the living. The Washing ceremony's purpose could be seen as to provide a sense of renewal and cleanliness. The Anointing ceremony’s purpose could be seen as to provide a sense of worthiness and confidence. The Endowment is a bit more complicated. The Endowment has been referred to as a “ritual drama”; it was meant to be a theatrical production that was performed by actors in front of a live audience. This, in itself, necessitates meeting in a special place at a special time for a special purpose, because its not everyday that you take part in a theatrical experience. Within this drama the patrons participate in this performance by wearing certain clothing, performing certain actions, saying certain things, and making certain commitments. These all tend to invoke a sense of rebirth and communal belonging in temple patrons. Oftentimes the first time someone attends an Endowment ceremony is a coming of age rite, because it is usually performed in early adulthood. 3. If the temple rituals can be changed or removed, could it change again in other fundamental ways to exclude outdated ideas and beliefs? The first time I went through the temple I was presented with the most current snapshot of the Endowment along with the belief that it had been unchanged since the inception of the ceremony, which itself was an ancient and restored ceremony. However, I know better now. We are able to illustrate how rituals have changed throughout the years, often to come into compliance with cultural norms. I talked a bit about these in the previous part of this series of posts, but I think they bear repeating.
The Oath of Vengeance and polygamous marriages were completely removed to prevent being seen as anti-American.
The Washing ceremony went from being done naked in a tub with a literal washing to an open poncho with a symbolic washing on different parts of the body to a jumpsuit with a symbolic washing only on the head - all to not be seen as sexually invasive.
The preacher was removed to stop antagonizing other religions.
The Endowments had all of the penalties modified to be less gruesome in the early 1900s and then removed entirely for the same reason in 1990.
In 2019 the Endowments were altered to become more egalitarian.
Honestly, I see absolutely no reason why the temples’ rituals couldn’t change in further fundamental ways in order to better facilitate the purposes that we examined in #2. 4. Who has the authority to change the ceremonies and how often should they be allowed to change? This is really the fundamental question. Who are the arbiters of our heritage and its rituals? Do we get to have a say in them? Are we allowed to express it in other ways? Within the LDS church that authority rests solely with the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. No variance in the temples’ rituals are allowed or tolerated. In my essay “If Mormonism is going to survive, it will not be within an LDS context.” I discuss why this is such a poor model for leadership. Suffice it to say, the LDS church is lead by a straight, caucasian, patriarchal gerontocracy. This leads to very little social progress, and leads many people feeling disconnected from the purposes of our rituals that I outlined in #2. However, one important thing to keep in mind that even right now the LDS church is not the sole arbiter of these rituals. Many other Mormon sects have their own versions today. This opens up who exactly owns these rituals. In my opinion, they belong to the Mormon people as a whole. It is our heritage’s rituals, and since we are the inheritors of this heritage, we have the ability to interpret and reinvent them however we see fit. This brings us to the second half of the question: how often should they change? The best way I have heard these rituals described is an oral tradition. While I recognize that the various churches may have a scripts they use to train temple workers, the temple patrons themselves never read any of the rituals; they are experienced solely through an oral method. Oral traditions tend to stay pretty similar from generation to generation. However, details often change to reflect the new generations’ understanding and interpretation of the story. These traditions can be an organic tradition that is ever evolving. Depending on the tradition these can vary not at all or quite a bit. This definition of the temple rituals fits pretty well. So, with this in mind, the temples’ rituals should change whenever we feel like it needs to. 5. If God used 19th century techniques to communicate covenants in the Endowment ceremony, why can't 21st century techniques be used today? What would the Endowment and the temple look like if there wasn't a masonic influence? This is a topic so big, that I have decided to make this part 3 of the series. Stay tuned for more! EDIT: Thanks for the gold, Neo1971
Referendum in Italy about "the parliamentary cut", part 1/2.
In Italy, on the 20th and 21st of September there will be a referendum on the parliamentary cut. The "reform" provides a cut of about 1/3 of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, there is no "quorum" (basically a minimum necessary number of votes) and to make this reform pass it is simply necessary that the "Yes" prevails on the "No". This being said, in this post I'm going to list:
Why is important to vote "no"
The main parties that actually support the cut.
10 reasons to vote NO.
1)We will not save as much money as promised. The grillini's manifesto now reads "1 billion for citizens", which would amount to the savings obtained with 345 less parliamentary "salaries". The figure is greatly exaggerated: to reach it it would take ten years (two legislatures) and 100 million savings a year. The 5 Stars swear there will be many but it is easy to deny them. In fact, the latest budgets of the chamber and senate indicate an expense of 144.885 million euros for deputies and 79.386 million for senators between allowances and reimbursements. Which means that 230 fewer deputies would guarantee savings of 52.9 million and the renunciation of 115 senators would mean saving 28.530 million. Even so the grillini's promise is not respected, the total is 81.430 million less a year, not 100. But it is a calculation made before taxes, because the state recovers part of the indemnity in the form of IRPEF and regional surcharges and municipal. That's about ten million in revenue for deputies and six for senators. Net savings are therefore lower: 42.7 million for deputies and 22.7 million for senators, a total of 65.4 million a year. There is more: a portion of the reimbursements that are due each year to deputies and senators is intended to pay collaborators. Those who want to cut the "poltrone" (translated as "armchairs") have never yet said that they also want to fire assistants (and in some ways, indeed, their number could even rise, we will see later). The real net savings can therefore be calculated at 36 million for deputies and 17 million for senators, for a total that is almost half of that announced by the supporters of the yes.w 2) It is just a raw cut. But is it right to pay so much attention to savings when talking about an institution like parliament? If your answer is still yes, and even 50 million a year does not seem negligible at all, it is good to consider that this savings obtained by cutting the representation would allow you to save only 2.5% on the annual room and senate expenses. To have a yardstick, it can be considered that the total expenses of the chamber and senate for personnel (salaries and social security, we are therefore talking about all but the elected) are about 350 million a year. That is seven times what would be saved by giving up 230 deputies and 115 senators. These charges will not be affected. Fifty million a year means that to get to the one billion lower expenses advertised by Di Maio (who has also already published an outline of what he intends to do, immediately, with that money) it will be necessary to reach the end of four entire legislatures with the downsized parliament . Starting from the next one (if yes, they win). So go back to 2043. Meanwhile, the economists of the Observatory on Italian public accounts led by Carlo Cottarelli have calculated savings very close to what we have estimated for the cut of 445 parliamentarians, for them it is 57 million a year. And they added that this is just 0.007% of Italian public spending (the Chamber and Senate have independent budgets, but evidently the savings would lead to fewer public transfers). Finally, dividing the annual savings for the entire Italian population, the Observatory on Public Accounts concluded that this is the equivalent of a coffee (0.95 cents) per year for each of us 60 million. In exchange for an important cut to the representation (about 1/3). 3) The ratio between the population and its "political representatives" will decrease significantly. There are two aspects to be evaluated. The first is the ratio between the number of inhabitants and the number of parliamentarians (deputies and senators). The higher this ratio, the less citizens are represented, in the sense that a parliamentarian must represent a larger slice of the "people". So it is easy to understand why in the last hundred years the deputies have always grown, let's take as reference the legislature of 1919 because it was the first in which the current Chamber of Montecitorio came into operation (and it was the last legislature without Benito Mussolini among the benches) , then the Italians did not reach 40 million. Since 1919, the number of deputies has increased by 112 (there were 518 at the time), always increasing with the exception of the two legislatures elected with the plebiscitary system during the fascist regime. Curiosity: in that period the seats for deputies were reduced to just 400 as it is intended to do now. In 1948 the Constitution did not provide for a fixed number of deputies and senators. The former should have been one for every 80,000 inhabitants or a fraction greater than 40,000, while the senators would have been one for every 200,000 inhabitants or a fraction greater than 100,000. Consequently, in the first legislature there were 572 deputies and 237 senators. The relationship with the population was frozen in 1963, when a constitutional reform established a fixed number of parliamentarians: 630 deputies and 315 senators (plus life senators and former presidents of the Republic). Although almost sixty years have passed since those constitutional reforms, the ratio between voters and elected representatives has remained roughly the same: it has increased somewhat in the chamber, where today there is one deputy for every 96 thousand inhabitants and has decreased somewhat to the senate, where today there is a senator for every 192 thousand inhabitants. With the cut these proportions would be distorted. 4) We will be the last in the EU (a comparison with other EU states). Today Italy with its 96 thousand inhabitants per deputy is one of the states with greater representation: more than the United Kingdom (one deputy for every 102 thousand inhabitants), more than Holland (one every 114 thousand), Germany and France (both have a deputy every 116 thousand inhabitants) and more than Spain (one every 133 thousand). A greater ratio between voters and elected representatives than ours is in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Greece and Portugal, among others. However, it is incorrect to say, as the 5 Stars say, that with the reform Italy will "align itself" with the major European countries. In fact, the cut of 230 deputies will bring our ratio up to one deputy for every 151 thousand voters. That is, we would suddenly become the country with the worst representation among all the 28 members of the European Union. And by far, given that Spain would be after us, stopping at one deputy for every 133,000 inhabitants. Moreover in Madrid the "upper" chamber is of mixed composition - in part it is elected by universal suffrage, in part it is designated by the autonomous communities - in any case larger than the new Italian senate (266 senators against our 200) for a much smaller population ( 46 million against our 60 million). 5) Some regions will be penalized more than others. Because by significantly decreasing the number of elected nationals, minus 230 deputies and minus 115 senators as mentioned, the number of representatives of individual territories obviously decreases. Until it becomes a small number, this is especially true in the Senate. With 196 senators (four are destined to be elected abroad) to be distributed in the twenty regions - confirmed the "minimum quotas" of a senator in Valle d'Aosta and two in Molise - the cut will be heavy everywhere. But not too heavy. For example, Tuscany will lose six senators (from 18 to 12), with a cut of 33.3%. Below the national average, which is 36.5%. Friuli Venezia Giulia is more penalized, which will suffer a 42.9% cut, the same percentage as Abruzzo (both regions will go from 7 to 4 senators). Calabria is also bad, with less than 40% (from 10 to 6 senators). But above all to be penalized will be Umbria and Basilicata, which will go from 7 to 3 senators, for both less 57.1%. An abyss compared to Trentino Alto Adige, which - due to the two autonomous provinces to which an equal number of senators has been guaranteed - will lose just one seat in total, suffering a decrease in representation well below the national average: minus 14.3% . The result of this distribution is the photograph of an unequal Italy, where in Trentino Alto Adige on average there will be an elected seat for the senate for every 171,000 inhabitants. And in Sardinia an elective seat for every 328,000 inhabitants, that is almost double. Naturally this also has effects on political representation, penalizing the less strong lists, as well as on territorial representation. 6) The threshold to get a candidate elected will have the small parties penalized. In the proposal being examined by the Chamber, this threshold is set at 5% and there are those who consider it, with good reasons, excessive. But it is only the "explicit" threshold, the one that is written in the law. Much higher is the "implicit" threshold, the one that the lists will actually have to reach in order to hope to have an elected person, precisely because the elected members of the college are very few. Once again, therefore, the problem arises above all in the Senate. For example, in Liguria, where only five senators will be elected, if the cut is approved, exceeding 5% will not help, given that the "implicit" threshold will be more than double (about 12.5%). Basilicata with its three senators will only see an effective threshold of almost 20% at work: according to current polls, only two parties can reach it. The problem, mitigated, is also posed to the Chamber. The Senate is heavier because it adds the constitutional provision according to which the "upper" chamber must be elected on a regional basis. This means that in order to win representatives on the territory, a party must overcome both the barriers at the regional level, the legal and the "natural" one (the second is usually higher than the first). This second problem is being tried to remedy with a constitutional reform just at the beginning of the parliamentary process: it would cancel the regional basis for the election of the senate, introducing the circumscriptional basis as for the chamber. The problem remains that small parties, when very few representatives are elected in the territory, are condemned to remain outside. 7) This reform will make the Senate and the Chamber even less efficient. Fewer parliamentarians means faster work, given the unproven theorem that a parliament is all the more efficient the number of legislative acts it produces. Often the opposite is true. In any case, is this really so? In reality today - even before the state of emergency, which exasperated the problems - parliamentary activity is set up according to the rhythms of the government. Law decrees to be examined by the deadline and matters of trust are the rule. The problem of submitting the legislative power to the needs of the long-standing executive will not be affected by the decrease in the number of parliamentarians. Above all because this is done with a clear anti-parliamentary intent, given that it is a question of giving up a cost considered unproductive. In reality, the chamber and the senate, condemned by an equal bicameralism - which is not even affected by this reform - can still work in sync, carrying out different bills at the same time. The work of the committees will not be facilitated at all, given that the regulations provide that they can go ahead with a third of the commissioners present: which means nine deputies or five senators. Too low a number for serious drafting work. 8) Again, this is just a raw cut: the old regulations will be superseded, but not changed. In fact, the proportional-based electoral law that should recover - but somewhat - the loss of representativeness that will certainly derive from the linear cut of the parliamentarians has not even been approved in the commission. And the other constitutional reforms that, right or wrong, the Pd and Leu had considered sufficient to "rebalance" the institutions have not been carried out: the equalization of the active and passive electorate of chamber and senate, the reduction of regional delegates for the election of the President of the Republic and the aforementioned introduction of the circumscriptional base also for the election of the Senate. But where all the incompleteness of the intended constitutional reform of the 5 Stars is felt is in the failure to update the parliamentary regulations. Which have been written for the current numbers of senators and deputies and provide a series of thresholds to guarantee especially minorities. Thirty deputies, for example, can today ask for the agenda to be reversed, ask for a secret ballot, submit sub-amendments to government amendments: obviously 30 out of 630 is very different from 30 out of 400. The smaller lists will have difficulty forming a group (20 deputies and 10 senators), even entering all the current 14 commissions and councils. Ultimately, the life of political minorities will be more difficult. 9) Voting abroad It is probably not the main one, but the cut of parliamentarians also poses a big problem for the representation of Italians abroad. Representation provided for by a reform thought badly (Tremaglia) and carried out worse, but which in any case today establishes (law 459 of 2001) that the deputies and senators elected abroad are chosen with the proportional system and the indication of preference. Today the largest foreign constituency is the European one (over two and a half million residents registered with the AIRE), followed by that of South America (one and a half million), the constituencies of Central North America and Africa are much smaller. Asia and Oceania. Not having had the courage to renounce the seats assigned abroad, the foreign delegation was also cut with the cut of national parliamentarians, a little less in percentage: in fact, it went from 12 to 6 deputies and from 8 to 4 senators. The result is that the MP elected in the smallest constituency (Africa, Asia, Oceania) will be three times more representative than the one elected in the largest constituency (Europe). The main mess has been made with the senators, who being only four will be one per constituency, whether it is a very large or very small constituency. We will thus have a senator representing the whole of Europe, with all that that means in terms of electoral campaign (impossible and / or very expensive) and representation. But also with the betrayal of the proportional principle established by law: all the senatorial colleges of the foreign constituencies will in fact be single-member constituencies. The seat will in fact go to those who take one more vote and to him alone. 10) This reform is only useless, and eventually harmful. The defects and shortcomings of this constitutional reform are such that even supporters of the yes sometimes resort to the definitive argument: after all, it is almost forty years (since the first bicameral commission for reforms) that the reduction of parliamentarians is proposed. True, but it was never proposed as a linear cut without other interventions on the institutional framework. It is also true that in the past the left has sided with the reduction, especially after the regional (legislative) assemblies have expanded and shifted representation downwards. But the proposal (Ferrara, Rodotà, 1985) also in that case was systematic and above all provided for single-chamberism. A single chamber of 600 deputies elected with a proportional law would not have all the problems in terms of penalizing the territorial and political representation that the 5-star reform has instead. Reform, the latter, which appeared for the first time in an official document in the update note to the Def of September 2018 (Conte-Salvini yellow-green government), however, linked in two ways with the introduction of "direct democracy". The approval process was very fast: from the first reading of the first resolution (February 2019 in the Senate) to the second reading of the second resolution (October 2019 in the chamber) just eight months have passed. It is difficult to find such rapid precedents for constitutional reforms in the last twenty years. The only constitutional change that was approved at this speed (even by qualified majority) was the introduction of a balanced budget in the Constitution in 2012. Almost everyone regretted it. Source Due to problems of length and information-gathering, this post will be divided in 2 parts, in the second one I will talk about the parties supportive of this "cut" and,other reasons to vote no and poll results.
Also published here Please enjoy, please comment, and if so inclined, please share. I would like to start by suggesting that if a voice in your head tells you to kill somebody, you ought to ignore that voice. If that voice tells that you ought to chop the head off of a person that is so drunk as to be unconscious, even if the unconscious drunk has property that you would like to steal, you still ought to ignore that voice. But what if that voice in your head asserts that it is the voice of the Spirit of God? If The Almighty deigns to speak to such as you or I, surely we ought not ignore His voice… I cannot speak for everyone, but if I had a voice in my head telling me to kill someone, even if (especially if?) that voice claimed to be the Spirit of God Himself, my most likely course of action would be to seek immediate treatment for mental illness. However, in the LDS church, children are taught to sing a song that celebrates the very event described above. And even though it is in reference a story about following a voice in your head telling you to behead an unconscious drunk in order to facilitate stealing his property, it is sung for the purposes of teaching those children to always listen to God, to trust Him, and to be obedient to His will. The song in question is #120 in the Children’s Songbook, “Nephi’s Courage.” The first verse tells us The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates From the wicked Laban inside the city gates. Laman and Lemuel were both afraid to try. Nephi was courageous. This was his reply: The chorus teaches the lesson that is to be instilled by singing the song: I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands. I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey. I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands. I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey. The chorus and first verse of “Nephi’s Courage” are referencing a story contained in Chapters 3and 4 of 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon (BoM): 3: 7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them. Chapter 4 provides the details of how the Lord “prepared” the way (italics and underlining added for emphasis) for Nephi: 6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. 7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine. 8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban. 9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel. 10 And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him. 11 And the Spiritsaidunto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. 12 And it came to pass that the Spiritsaidunto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; 18 Therefore I did obey thevoiceof the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword. 19 And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins. 20 And after I had done this, I went forth unto the treasury of Laban. And as I went forth towards the treasury of Laban, behold, I saw the servant of Laban who had the keys of the treasury. And I commanded him in the voice of Laban, that he should go with me into the treasury. 24 And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls. Leaving aside the amateurish implausibility of the story[i], when innocent and impressionable LDS children are singing this song intended to instill the lesson that it is brave to be obedient to the will of God, they are actually singing about a BoM story in which Nephi listens to a voice in his head that tells him to behead an unconscious drunk so that he can steal his property. I don’t know if I can sufficiently convey how profoundly disturbing I find this. I’m confident that the majority of us know family and friends who experience voices in their heads. Depending on the research methodology and operational definitions,10 -70% of individuals without diagnosed mental illness have experienced hallucinatory voices (one of the studies referenced in the endnote reports that 11% of otherwise healthy university students reported hearing the voice of God) [ii] And certainly many of us live with, or have lived with, mental illness; at minimum we all know people who have. In some forms of mental illness, the prevalence of hallucinatory voices can be as high as 80%.[iii] Imagine the harm that the lesson of “Nephi’s Courage” could do to a young person with a tendency to mental illness. After having the lesson of this song instilled through the repetition of a decade of Primary or Sunday School, and after being repeatedly taught that the BoM is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book…” (italics added for emphasis), a young person reads the BoM, recognizes the passage from the chorus of Nephi’s Courage, and reads on to discover that that alleged courage alluded to in the title of the song is the courage to murder someone when a voice in one’s instructs it. What lesson does a young person with mental illness take away from this? Even without taking mental illness into consideration, I recall being taught that I needed to listen to the “still small voice.”[iv] I was told that the still small voice would never guide me wrong, and that I must always be obedient to it. If the Church is going to teach children that we must always be obedient to the voice of the spirit, and that it is courageous to commit an act that, like Nephi, they find morally objectionable[v], perhaps that lesson needs to be accompanied with certain provisos. (i) Maybe children’s Primary lessons need to include a section on how to distinguish between hallucinatory voices in one’s head from the actual voice of the Spirit of God. Surely to teach children that they ought to follow through on morally reprehensible actions when a voice in the head tells them to, yet fail teach them how to judge between the actual voice of the Spirit of God and hallucinations would be, to say the least, irresponsible. Every person that I know who has heard voices as a symptom of illness has described them as appearing absolutely real. Certainly the President of the Church, his counsellors, and the Quorum of the 12, being Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, must have a reliable method for adjudicating which thoughts in his head are revelations and which are his own ideas (otherwise they would have no business claiming to be prophets, seers, or revelators); how easy would it be for the 15 to cobble together a guideline for the children to help them avoid following any non-revelatory voices in their heads? (ii) Should my Sunday School lessons have included a section that taught us to “always follow the still small voice, except when it is telling you to do something wrong?” That would, presumably, be absurd, and would imply that listening to the still small voice is not a reliable indicator of what is right. It would also directly contradict the lesson intended by repeatedly singing “Nephi’s Courage”—that listening to the spirit, even it seems to tell us to do something prima facie morally incorrect, is courageous. (iii) Perhaps, as a variation on (ii), children could be taught a comprehensive list of what is right and wrong, and then told to follow the spirit only when it corresponds with column A. But again, this would teach the children that the spirit is an unreliable guide to the good, and would further reveal that the spirit is unnecessary for knowing the good. More generally, what lesson does any child take away from this? For most right thinking people, killing an unconscious victim ought not be counted as morally acceptable. I would venture that most right thinking people would find such an act, not courageous, but morally abhorrent. Most need not be actually told that killing an unconscious victim is morally repugnant because most recognize it as intrinsically wrong. The wrongness of murder is not due to its illegality, rather its illegality is due to its intrinsic wrongness. The story of Nephi’s “courage” turns that order of operations on its head. It quite contradicts the intuition that murder is intrinsically wrong, because, in order for the story to make sense, the fact that God requires the murder of Laban makes it somehow morally praiseworthy. Consequently, a necessary condition for the story to work is that murder cannot be intrinsically wrong. Even more generally, the lesson to be derived from Nephi’s courage is the lesson of Divine Command Theory[vi]--that morality is not derived from society, norms, rules, or laws, but from the will of God. St. Augustine of Hippo defined sin as “a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God.”[vii] The LDS Bible Dictionary does not offer a definition of sin, however official LDS websites suggest that sin is “[w]illful disobedience to God’s commandments,”[viii] and explain that “[t]o commit sin is to willfully disobey God's commandments or to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth (see James 4:17).”[ix]Divine Command Theory is closely conceptually linked to the notion of sin. The various formulations of Divine Command Theory share a common core: that the only foundation for ethics is found in God’s command, that God’s will is the ultimate and only source/foundation of morality/virtue/the good. That being the case, morality/virtue/goodness is defined by whether an act is performed in obedience/conformity to divine will, while the bad/evil/sin is defined by being in a volitional defiance to divine will (1st John 3:4; Romans 7: 12-14). To offer a sufficient critique of Divine Command Theory would be too time consuming, so I refer the reader to “Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin” or to a shorter version of the same (edited for Sunstone Magazine), “Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us.” The lesson to be derived by impressionable Primary children by singing “Nephi’s Courage” and learning about the still small voice is that God is the source of morality. What lesson can be drawn from learning that even murder is not intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? That nothing can be intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? No matter how wrong an action may be seen by society, by norms, or even by law, if God tells you do it, it is a courageous act! And how does one know if God is telling you to do something? The spirit. The voices. The still small voice. Feelings. I put it to you, gentle reader, that this amounts to the antithesis of morality, that it creates a moral vacuum in which anything and everything is permissible. If it is okay to do whatever your feelings tell you is okay, even if it would be otherwise morally impermissible, then NOTHING is actually morally impermissible, and the lesson of Nephi’s alleged “courage” risks contributing to a culture of amorality in Mormonism. [i] The story is amateurishly implausible. If one person holds up another person by the hair it would be mechanically impossible to swing a sword with the other arm with the force necessary to “smote” the victim’s head off. Mime the actions for yourself, you will see what I mean. And after smoting off his head, the victim’s clothes would be soaked in blood; when Nephi stole Laban’s clothes to impersonate him and steal the brass plates, Zoram (Laban’s servant) would have been suspicious. [ii]http://www.intervoiceonline.org/research-2/research-summaries/voice-hearing-prevalence [iii] Hugdahl K. Auditory hallucinations: A review of the ERC "VOICE" project. World J Psychiatry. 2015;5(2):193-209. doi:10.5498/wjp.v5.i2.193 [iv]https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2007/08/listen-to-the-still-small-voice?lang=eng https://littleldsideas.net/primary/sharing-time-ideas/holy-ghost/sharing-time-the-holy-ghost-speaks-in-a-still-small-voice/ [v] “I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.” 1st Nephi 4:10. [vi] There are plenty of places to find definitions of Divine Command Theory. For example: https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/, http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/christian-ethics/divine-command-theory/, and http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067955_ss1-129 [vii]https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sin-theology [viii]https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/sin [ix]https://www.lds.org/topics/sin?lang=eng
Also published here Please enjoy, please comment, and if so inclined, please share. I would like to start by suggesting that if a voice in your head tells you to kill somebody, you ought to ignore that voice. If that voice tells that you ought to chop the head off of a person that is so drunk as to be unconscious, even if the unconscious drunk has property that you would like to steal, you still ought to ignore that voice. But what if that voice in your head asserts that it is the voice of the Spirit of God? If The Almighty deigns to speak to such as you or I, surely we ought not ignore His voice… I cannot speak for everyone, but if I had a voice in my head telling me to kill someone, even if (especially if?) that voice claimed to be the Spirit of God Himself, my most likely course of action would be to seek immediate treatment for mental illness. However, in the LDS church, children are taught to sing a song that celebrates the very event described above. And even though it is in reference a story about following a voice in your head telling you to behead an unconscious drunk in order to facilitate stealing his property, it is sung for the purposes of teaching those children to always listen to God, to trust Him, and to be obedient to His will. The song in question is #120 in the Children’s Songbook, “Nephi’s Courage.” The first verse tells us The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates From the wicked Laban inside the city gates. Laman and Lemuel were both afraid to try. Nephi was courageous. This was his reply: The chorus teaches the lesson that is to be instilled by singing the song: I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands. I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey. I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands. I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey. The chorus and first verse of “Nephi’s Courage” are referencing a story contained in Chapters 3and 4 of 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon (BoM): 3: 7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them. Chapter 4 provides the details of how the Lord “prepared” the way (italics and underlining added for emphasis) for Nephi: 6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. 7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine. 8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban. 9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel. 10 And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him. 11 And the Spiritsaidunto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. 12 And it came to pass that the Spiritsaidunto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; 18 Therefore I did obey thevoiceof the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword. 19 And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins. 20 And after I had done this, I went forth unto the treasury of Laban. And as I went forth towards the treasury of Laban, behold, I saw the servant of Laban who had the keys of the treasury. And I commanded him in the voice of Laban, that he should go with me into the treasury. 24 And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls. Leaving aside the amateurish implausibility of the story[i], when innocent and impressionable LDS children are singing this song intended to instill the lesson that it is brave to be obedient to the will of God, they are actually singing about a BoM story in which Nephi listens to a voice in his head that tells him to behead an unconscious drunk so that he can steal his property. I don’t know if I can sufficiently convey how profoundly disturbing I find this. I’m confident that the majority of us know family and friends who experience voices in their heads. Depending on the research methodology and operational definitions,10 -70% of individuals without diagnosed mental illness have experienced hallucinatory voices (one of the studies referenced in the endnote reports that 11% of otherwise healthy university students reported hearing the voice of God) [ii] And certainly many of us live with, or have lived with, mental illness; at minimum we all know people who have. In some forms of mental illness, the prevalence of hallucinatory voices can be as high as 80%.[iii] Imagine the harm that the lesson of “Nephi’s Courage” could do to a young person with a tendency to mental illness. After having the lesson of this song instilled through the repetition of a decade of Primary or Sunday School, and after being repeatedly taught that the BoM is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book…” (italics added for emphasis), a young person reads the BoM, recognizes the passage from the chorus of Nephi’s Courage, and reads on to discover that that alleged courage alluded to in the title of the song is the courage to murder someone when a voice in one’s instructs it. What lesson does a young person with mental illness take away from this? Even without taking mental illness into consideration, I recall being taught that I needed to listen to the “still small voice.”[iv] I was told that the still small voice would never guide me wrong, and that I must always be obedient to it. If the Church is going to teach children that we must always be obedient to the voice of the spirit, and that it is courageous to commit an act that, like Nephi, they find morally objectionable[v], perhaps that lesson needs to be accompanied with certain provisos. (i) Maybe children’s Primary lessons need to include a section on how to distinguish between hallucinatory voices in one’s head from the actual voice of the Spirit of God. Surely to teach children that they ought to follow through on morally reprehensible actions when a voice in the head tells them to, yet fail teach them how to judge between the actual voice of the Spirit of God and hallucinations would be, to say the least, irresponsible. Every person that I know who has heard voices as a symptom of illness has described them as appearing absolutely real. Certainly the President of the Church, his counsellors, and the Quorum of the 12, being Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, must have a reliable method for adjudicating which thoughts in his head are revelations and which are his own ideas (otherwise they would have no business claiming to be prophets, seers, or revelators); how easy would it be for the 15 to cobble together a guideline for the children to help them avoid following any non-revelatory voices in their heads? (ii) Should my Sunday School lessons have included a section that taught us to “always follow the still small voice, except when it is telling you to do something wrong?” That would, presumably, be absurd, and would imply that listening to the still small voice is not a reliable indicator of what is right. It would also directly contradict the lesson intended by repeatedly singing “Nephi’s Courage”—that listening to the spirit, even it seems to tell us to do something prima facie morally incorrect, is courageous. (iii) Perhaps, as a variation on (ii), children could be taught a comprehensive list of what is right and wrong, and then told to follow the spirit only when it corresponds with column A. But again, this would teach the children that the spirit is an unreliable guide to the good, and would further reveal that the spirit is unnecessary for knowing the good. More generally, what lesson does any child take away from this? For most right thinking people, killing an unconscious victim ought not be counted as morally acceptable. I would venture that most right thinking people would find such an act, not courageous, but morally abhorrent. Most need not be actually told that killing an unconscious victim is morally repugnant because most recognize it as intrinsically wrong. The wrongness of murder is not due to its illegality, rather its illegality is due to its intrinsic wrongness. The story of Nephi’s “courage” turns that order of operations on its head. It quite contradicts the intuition that murder is intrinsically wrong, because, in order for the story to make sense, the fact that God requires the murder of Laban makes it somehow morally praiseworthy. Consequently, a necessary condition for the story to work is that murder cannot be intrinsically wrong. Even more generally, the lesson to be derived from Nephi’s courage is the lesson of Divine Command Theory[vi]--that morality is not derived from society, norms, rules, or laws, but from the will of God. St. Augustine of Hippo defined sin as “a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God.”[vii] The LDS Bible Dictionary does not offer a definition of sin, however official LDS websites suggest that sin is “[w]illful disobedience to God’s commandments,”[viii] and explain that “[t]o commit sin is to willfully disobey God's commandments or to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth (see James 4:17).”[ix]Divine Command Theory is closely conceptually linked to the notion of sin. The various formulations of Divine Command Theory share a common core: that the only foundation for ethics is found in God’s command, that God’s will is the ultimate and only source/foundation of morality/virtue/the good. That being the case, morality/virtue/goodness is defined by whether an act is performed in obedience/conformity to divine will, while the bad/evil/sin is defined by being in a volitional defiance to divine will (1st John 3:4; Romans 7: 12-14). To offer a sufficient critique of Divine Command Theory would be too time consuming, so I refer the reader to “Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin” or to a shorter version of the same (edited for Sunstone Magazine), “Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us.” The lesson to be derived by impressionable Primary children by singing “Nephi’s Courage” and learning about the still small voice is that God is the source of morality. What lesson can be drawn from learning that even murder is not intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? That nothing can be intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? No matter how wrong an action may be seen by society, by norms, or even by law, if God tells you do it, it is a courageous act! And how does one know if God is telling you to do something? The spirit. The voices. The still small voice. Feelings. I put it to you, gentle reader, that this amounts to the antithesis of morality, that it creates a moral vacuum in which anything and everything is permissible. If it is okay to do whatever your feelings tell you is okay, even if it would be otherwise morally impermissible, then NOTHING is actually morally impermissible, and the lesson of Nephi’s alleged “courage” risks contributing to a culture of amorality in Mormonism. [i] The story is amateurishly implausible. If one person holds up another person by the hair it would be mechanically impossible to swing a sword with the other arm with the force necessary to “smote” the victim’s head off. Mime the actions for yourself, you will see what I mean. And after smoting off his head, the victim’s clothes would be soaked in blood; when Nephi stole Laban’s clothes to impersonate him and steal the brass plates, Zoram (Laban’s servant) would have been suspicious. [ii]http://www.intervoiceonline.org/research-2/research-summaries/voice-hearing-prevalence [iii] Hugdahl K. Auditory hallucinations: A review of the ERC "VOICE" project. World J Psychiatry. 2015;5(2):193-209. doi:10.5498/wjp.v5.i2.193 [iv]https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2007/08/listen-to-the-still-small-voice?lang=eng https://littleldsideas.net/primary/sharing-time-ideas/holy-ghost/sharing-time-the-holy-ghost-speaks-in-a-still-small-voice/ [v] “I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.” 1st Nephi 4:10. [vi] There are plenty of places to find definitions of Divine Command Theory. For example: https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/, http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/christian-ethics/divine-command-theory/, and http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067955_ss1-129 [vii]https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sin-theology [viii]https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/sin [ix]https://www.lds.org/topics/sin?lang=eng
2019 Year in Review. A look back at TSCC's year that was. (long)
It's time once again to gather our loved ones together, pause this busy world of ours, and spend a few moments reflecting on the church's past year. Soon, we feel a stirring deep in our souls confirming that our holiday eggnog is about to come back up. How bad was this year for the church? That depends entirely on your tolerance for viewing Mormon mug shots -- which definitely needs to be a drink at a Salt Lake bar. But for now, gird up your loins as we prepare to wade into the depths of TSCC's 2019. Like Mormonism itself, the following is a mix of fact, fiction, “speaking as a man” personal opinion, and creative liberties with the truth. And just like Mormonism, I don’t bother to tell you which is which. January Spouting the refrain "New Year, New You", Repair-It Rusty freshens up the aging endowment ceremony for the new year, making it notably less sexist: women are now allowed to covenant directly with God instead of a husband and are no longer required to veil their faces during prayer. When announcing the changes, Pres. Newsroom apologized for the past sexism in the endowment and asked that we now put it all behind us, where women belong. With double-digit stake growth every single week and people definitely not leaving in droves, Renlund and Corbridge nevertheless kick off the new year by going on the offensive against church doubters. In a churchwide fireside and BYU devotional, the two general authorities so dismantled the weak criticisms of exmos that it became downright embarrassing for anyone who had been foolish enough to leave the church. Ha ha! No. Renlund and Corbridge were just about to get to the definitive answers but, lamentably, the poor analogies, tired clichés, and gaslighting took up so much time they had to end their talks before getting to that part. February At a February devotional in Chicago, Oaks raises eyebrows when he cautions members that "research is not the answer" when dealing with a disbelieving spouse. Although discouraging research is an unusual stance for a former state supreme court justice, Oaks nevertheless urged members to look instead to the example of the church's founder, who -- when faced with his own disbelieving spouse -- wasted no time researching her concerns but simply threatened her with eternal destruction and continued shacking up with younger girls behind her back. Continuing his U.S. stadium tour, non-Mormon Nelson rents the NFL football stadium in Phoenix, Arizona to implore the members from this dry desert community to stay in the boat -- as apt a metaphor for Mormonism as you are ever likely to find. Mormons mourn a high-profile death in February when the Spirit of DiscernmentTM dies of embarrassment after leaders fail to discern that a Lehi bishop was moonlighting as a pimp. Seeking to reassure members troubled by the news, Pres. Newsroom repeatedly stressed that the church immediately released the man as soon as they discovered he had not paid tithing on his pimping income. March In the mood for some spring cleaning, Repair-It Rusty tosses out the church's verboten internet domains lds.org, mormon.org, and mormonnewsroom.org. While some speculated the church would finally embrace its commercial orientation and begin using lds.com for its primary domain, Pres. Newsroom denied the rumors, and -- noting the church's recent efforts at increased transparency -- announced the church would use the even more accurate lds.con. After three nerve-racking weeks anticipating their prison walls to collapse -- as described in Mormon scripture -- Russian authorities crack under the pressure and release and deport two Mormon missionaries who had been detained in a Russian jail for illegal proselyting. Church-owned media take great pains to call the missionaries "volunteers" while reporting the story, albeit volunteers who received a mission call, trained in a missionary training center, were governed by a missionary handbook, and supervised by a mission president. "We're baffled why Russia thinks they are missionaries," shrugged Pres. Newsroom, referring further questions to the church missionary department. Demonstrating careful stewardship over the widow's mite, TSCC flies the entire Q15 and their wives on a boondoggle trip to Italy for the Rome temple dedication. After the 30-person entourage entered the temple, Pres. Newsroom wistfully noted the temple would never see that many people in attendance ever again. April In April, Mormons mourn a second high-profile death when the Spirit of RevelationTM dies of embarrassment after TSCC abruptly reverses the Nov. LGBT policy of exclusion a mere three years after non-Mormon Nelson declared it was revelation directly from God. When asked about the suspiciously short lifespan of revelation from an omniscient God, Pres. Newsroom confessed the policy was actually born of a desire to punish the gays but, upon further reflection, the Brethren realized allowing their children to become Mormon was, by far, the greater punishment. With double-digit stake growth every single week and people definitely not leaving in droves, non-Mormon Nelson nevertheless devotes time in general conference to attack those who leave the church, uttering the menacing threat that if they don't come back to church soon, they won't get to spend eternity with the very people now harshly castigating them for leaving the church. In an Easter miracle, the Spirit of DiscernmentTM is resurrected with new life, only to die from embarrassment yet again when Sterling Van Wagenen -- producer of the church's sacred temple endowment videos -- pleads guilty to multiple counts of child sexual abuse. Demonstrating that vigilant concern for youth protection the church is well-known for, TBMs pay the Van Wagenen case the same close attention they devoted to his temple videos. After Cosmo the Cougar and a BYU valedictorian both publicly come out as gay, TSCC undertakes a thorough review of its policy on gays at BYU, and -- troubled by numerous heartbreaking accounts from gay BYU students -- places the entire admissions office on probation for admitting so damn many of them. May BYU is back in the news in May when BYU students publicly share abusive and demeaning experiences they suffered as part of honor code investigations. Squirming under public scrutiny, the Honor Code office caves faster than a freshman on Friday night and hastily announces changes to the way honor code investigations will be conducted: female students will no longer be required to give embarrassingly detailed verbal descriptions of sexual encounters, but are now encouraged to submit photo, video, or even pantomime evidence instead. After decades of denigrating couples who married civilly prior to a temple sealing, TSCC abruptly announces that was all made up and couples who marry civilly can be sealed afterward in a temple with no waiting period. Utah couples immediately begin setting new world records for the number of sex acts committed in a moving car traveling from the civil wedding site to the nearest temple 2.3 miles away. June At a June mission president training, Ballard claims with a straight face that church leaders don't know where the practice began of quickly committing investigators to baptism. Exmos denounce Ballard's gaslighting and point to Preach My Gospel -- developed under Ballard's leadership -- which encourages missionaries to extend a baptism invitation as soon as the first discussion. Exmos concede defeat in the argument, however, when Ballard counters that his statement is technically correct (the best kind of correct) because church leaders know missionaries don't bother to read the drivel in Preach My Gospel, much less follow it. Prior to performing at the Orlando leg of his stadium tour, non-Mormon Nelson meets with the owner of the Pulse nightclub -- scene of a horrific mass shooting of LGBT patrons -- to extend condolences. Two days later -- and only two months after Oaks pleaded for "less contentious communications" on LGBT issues -- Oaks blasts gays, lesbians, and transgender people at a BYU-Hawaii devotional, calling them "a culture of evil and personal wickedness." Afterward, Pres. Newsroom claimed with a straight face that church leaders don't know where the rhetoric comes from that incites people to commit violence against evil LGBT sinners who are going straight to hell, the sooner the better, if you get my drift, wink wink, nod nod. July Agents for the Internet Crimes Against Children task force track down a man wanted for the sexual extortion of more than 50 teen girls -- only to find him currently serving a Mormon mission in Mexico. The next day, a gaunt, naked man wearing only a sombrero was found floating face down in the Temple Square fountain. The man would only give his name as Señor Discernment and insisted church security note in their report that he was still dead. In a historic first, non-Mormon Nelson speaks at the NAACP's annual conference. Representing a church that until last year did not have a single non-white member of its top leadership quorum throughout its 188-year history, Nelson nevertheless promised the NAACP audience that if they could look past the blatant racism in the church's foundational scripture, numerous racist statements from past prophets, and previous official discriminatory policies -- they would see there's a lot more reasons to dislike the church besides that. August With TSCC in full panic mode after Starbucks announces it will open a store near the BYU campus, the New Era rushes out an article dispensing emergency advice for members who might accidentally find themselves in a coffee hot drinks shop. The article sternly warns members to avoid unpronounceable foreign-sounding drinks, avoid all "--ccinos", and avoid making eye contact with Satan's Servants, identifiable by their green aprons. Wait, back up... A year after excommunicating Sam Young for demanding better youth protection guidelines, TSCC rolls out new youth protection guidelines. When asked about the awkward incongruity of excommunicating a man for pushing the church to do the right thing, Pres. Newsroom clarified that Young was not excommunicated because he was wrong on the issue, he was excommunicated because he sat in the wrong color conference chair. A former Utah bishop and current stake high councilor is arrested in a peeping tom incident in a Nashville dressing room. Although the man's accomplice wife begged the victim not to call the police, the victim -- unfamiliar with Utah custom on handling criminal incidents involving someone with a calling higher than Sunday School president -- contacted police anyway. As police gathered witness statements, a gaunt, naked man wearing only a cowboy hat and boots approached police, gave his name as The Spirit formerly known as Discernment, and demanded they note in their report that he was, in fact, still dead. September In September, Repair-It Rusty tries to smooth over the botched repair job of the Nov. 2015 LGBT policy and subsequent reversal when, at a BYU devotional, he informs students that invoking the policy of exclusion and revoking that same policy equally demonstrate God's love. While cynical exmos were quick to condemn Nelson's remarks, I, for one, feel better knowing that all the girls in high school who wouldn't allow me to sit by them at lunch, talk to them in the hall, or ask them on a date were really showing me how much they loved me. I'm kicking myself now for lacking the prophetic insight to properly interpret their actions! Demonstrating careful stewardship over the widow's mite, non-Mormon Nelson throws himself a blowout 95th birthday bash in the conference center, complete with a countdown timer on lds.org churchofjesuschrist.org, numerous photo and video montages of Nelson's life and career, opera singers, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, Mormon Church of Jesus Christ Superstar Donny Osmond, and non-Mormon Nelson himself showing off for the crowd by tickling the ivories on a Steinway. When asked how they liked the birthday party, attendees said they had never wished so hard to be Jehovah's Witnesses. October Repair-It Rusty spruces the church up for conference by killing off YM presidencies and the structure of the YW organization, and announces women and children can now serve as witnesses at baptisms because they were making up the priesthood requirement all along. Encouraged by the latest baby steps toward equality, women in the church look forward to the day when they will finally be allowed to organize and attend a campout by themselves. Six months after Nelson the Mafia don threatened family togetherness in the afterlife, Oaks plays good cop to Nelson's bad cop and tells the general conference audience to stop worrying about the afterlife because we don't know much about it, except that gay people won't be there. While the subjects Oaks doesn't know much about could fill entire libraries, we can actually take his word on this one, because being surrounded by assholes like Oaks and Packer for all eternity would be the opposite of Heaven for gay people. Or straight people. Or compassionate people. Or those with common sense. Or simple human decency. Or... Finally in October, TSCC stirs up controversy when it formally opposes a proposed Utah ban on gay conversion therapy, even though the practice has been shown to be false and psychologically harmful to youth. When questioned on the church's opposition, Pres. Newsroom emphatically declared it was of utmost importance to the church's very survival to prevent a ban on Utah anti-LGBT organizations that have been shown to be false and psychologically harmful to youth. November In November, TBMs go ballistic when women and children from a Mormon polygamous community in Mexico are ambushed -- not because women and children were murdered but because the media refers to them as Mormon. Though it seems presumptuous to demand media not use a term to describe a completely different religious group simply because your group rejected the term, Pres. Newsroom clarified the concern stems from the realization that TSCC's poor behavior has made the name so toxic it's best if no one uses it now. A former Utah stake president pleads guilty to using his church position to steal $1.5 million from fellow church members in a fraudulent financial scheme. During the court hearing, a man dressed as a wolf wearing a sheep costume entered the courtroom, collapsed on the floor, and asked the court reporter to note that he was, in fact, still dead. Demonstrating that Christlike concern for the poor the church is well-known for, BYU-Idaho threatens to expel any students on Medicaid. After negative press coverage elicits a backlash against the school, BYU-I backs down and allows students on Medicaid to remain on campus, but limits their medical care to administering the two oils: essential and olive. TSCC updates the missionary handbook with instructions not to fast more than once a month, skip meals, wake up earlier, work longer hours, or sacrifice P-day -- all examples of rules mission presidents have imposed on missionaries in an attempt to exact higher obedience blessings. Pres. Newsroom claimed church leaders don't know where these practices began, but waking up at 5:30 in the morning, starving yourself, and foregoing any downtime sounds like just the sort of thing today's teenagers would come up with on their own. December December kicks off with the traditional first presidency Christmas devotional but controversy quickly engulfs the conference center when Eyring approaches the podium and announces -- much to the audience's surprise -- that he is still a member of the first presidency. TSCC announces that same sex relationships can now be documented in Family Search, but emphasizes this does not change church doctrine that only opposite sex relationships are recognized by God. Because God, who spends all eternity hanging around with two other dudes proclaiming how much they love each other, is confused by two guys spending their earthly lives together. Two weeks before Christmas, a disturbance mars the Christmastime cheer at City Creek mall when a gaunt, naked man wearing only a Santa hat sits on the mall Santa's lap and tells him that all he wants for Christmas is to finally be allowed -- like Oaks's heart -- to remain cold and dead forever. Jealous at the attention numerous Mormon lawbreakers received this year, TSCC grabs its own headlines when a former employee at Ensign Peak, TSCC's secretive investment firm, files an IRS whistleblower claim alleging TSCC is illegally sitting on $100 billion in charitable donations, which they claim to be holding for the Second Coming. Local and national media blast the church for their Scrooge-like stinginess in hoarding cash rather than helping their fellow man, thus reminding us all that while it's nice to receive gifts at Christmas, it's much more satisfying to see someone else receive the gift they truly deserve. And now, hearty exmos, as we look ahead to 2020 and brace ourselves for the new horrors that await us there, do take a moment to gather your loved ones together: you're going to need some help cleaning up that regurgitated eggnog. Happy New Year!
In other organisms, quorum sensing is used for symbiotic processes and cell growth; an example is the nitrogen-fixation mechanism of the bacterium Rhizobium leguminosarum. The communication abilities offered by quorum sensing are highly useful for bacteria because they allow bacteria populations to acquire traits found in plants , animals , and other higher-level organisms. QUORUM SENSING IN GRAM-NEGATIVE BACTERIA. The vast majority of gram-negative quorum-sensing systems that have been studied thus far utilize N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHL) as signaling molecules.When in high enough concentration, these molecules can bind to and activate a transcriptional activator, or R protein, which in turn induces expression of target genes (Fig. 1). Example 1 - Quorum Sensing in Vibrio fischeri – Bioluminescence. • Bioluminescence is defined as the emission of visible light from living organisms. • Bacteria are the most numerous of the light emitting life forms. • One of the most widely studied bacteria is Vibrio fischeri. Quorum sensing is the regulation of gene expression in response to fluctuations in cell-population density. Quorum sensing bacteria produce and release chemical signal molecules called autoinducers that increase in concentration as a function of cell density. The detection of a minimal threshold sti … Quorum sensing is widespread among both gram-negative bacteria and gram-positive bacteria, although the detailed mechanism varies somewhat. Each species that employs quorum sensing synthesizes a specific signal molecule called an autoinducer. In the basic system found in gram-negative bacteria, the autoinducer diffuses out across the cell quorum sensing. [ kwôr ′əm ] A phenomenon in which a population of bacteria produces and responds to intercellular chemical signals whose concentration indicates the density of the population. Quorum sensing allows bacteria to communicate within and between the species. This notion arose with the discovery and study of auto-inducer AI-2. LuxS encoding the AI-2 synthase is present in roughly half of all sequenced bacterial genomes. AI-2 production has been verified in a large number of these species. Quorum definition computer science. The rectangular grid with. Quorum is the fixed minimum number of members of an organization or society who must be present at a meeting for its business to be valid. A write quorum consists of a full column and one element from each of the remaining columns wq r c 1. quorum sensing. a process in which unicellular organisms secrete signal molecules that influence the behaviour of a population of identical organisms, but only when the density (number of cells per unit volume) of that population is above a certain level. Cells sense the concentration of the secreted signal molecule, often a homoserine lactone, A fascinating example of peptide quorum sensing exists in Staphylococcus aureus, which is normally a benign human commensal but becomes a deadly pathogen upon penetra-tion into host tissues (reviewed in Tenover & Gaynes 2000). S. aureus uses a biphasic strat-egy to cause disease: At low cell density, the
Homeostasis and Negative/Positive Feedback - YouTube
https://www.ibiology.org/microbiology/quorum-sensing/Bacteria, primitive single-celled organisms, communicate with chemical languages that allow them to sync... Quorum Sensing in bacteriach10a03Copyright: Microbiology An Evolving Science 3rd edition The ability of bacteria to sense other bacteria. Filmed by NC State students. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, or subsystem whose purpose is to detect events or changes in its environment and send the information to other electronics, frequently a ... This quorum sensing lecture explains about what is quorum sensing of baceteria? and what is the importance of quorum sensing as a molecular cross talk betwee... Explore homeostasis with the Amoeba Sisters and learn how homeostasis relates to feedback in the human body. This video gives examples of negative feedback (... Quorum sensing is how bacteria communicates and decides the behaviors it will express . In this talk, molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler discusses the use of... In this video the discussion is about the how bacteria signaling is important in maintaining the population density.In this video the concept is related with... An infrared camera on a tripod that records heat coming from a rock formation or an airplane flying over a rainforest that registers the sunlight reflected from the forest's canopy are examples of ... Product shown: PST-360 contactless rotary sensor Main features of Piher´s magnetic sensors: • Custom non-contacting angle sensing • Simple and robust mechanical and magnet design • Ideal in ...
