The price of "free" will

God accomplished miracles through Joseph Smith. Perhaps God could have accomplished some of these miracles more easily through another person, but in the big picture, it had to be Joseph Smith in all his weaknesses and all his strengths. In some ways, Joseph was similar to Christopher Columbus. Others had landed on shores of the New World, but none of them risked everything to promote the settlement of the lands there. Many others had seen visions, but only one man had the drive to risk everything to start a new religion, One of the prices he paid was a violent, early death. He was still a young man with a family.

I remember at different times, trying to explain how there can be evil in the universe if God is perfect and all powerful. The main reason I come up with is that we had to be given the gift of free will. Wow. The most expensive gift ever given. Every choice has cost massive amounts of misery and sacrifice. Each choice is precious, purchased with perfect blood and the sacrifices of martyrs.

By the Time I get to Venus...

From: Provo, Utah, USA, Sixth planet in from the Oort cloud.

To: All carbon-based sentient beings residing at least one light year from me

If you are reading this, you must be a civilized, self-aware life form of some kind. You live close to us, at least in astronomical terms... 1 to 120 light years away. You have been getting a lot of accidental electromagnetic signals from us in the 500 kHz to 1600 MHz range. We call this stuff "spam." Most of the stuff you have received from our planet has probably been confusing for you, to say the least. To be honest, most of us can't make much sense out of it either.

Please ignore any images you have received in which any orafice is moving and making noise. Some of those sounds are called "speech," but the vast majority are what we call "idiotic nonsense." I apologize on behalf of all of us here. It was all accidental, I assure you.

You have probably been sending out signals also, but we have not been making much effort to receive them. The big reason for that is: our smartest science guy (he rides around in a wheeled chair) said you would probably destroy us if you ever got here. The idea is that if we don't know about you, we won't be worried.

I'm not a big-time science guy, but I think we should take a different approach. You have already picked up the really bad signals we sent out accidentally. If you have deciphered this message, you are smart enough to know that all those images of us meeting with beings from other planets are fake -- even that really cool "ET" movie. We call our planet by lots of names: Earth, Terra, Gaia, Home, El Mundo, or Third Rock. So we call beings from other planets "Extra Terrestrial," also known as "ET."

Maybe you ET's have decided to come here for an extended visit. Believe me, that would be a really dumb idea. Here is why: We have thousands of nuclear weapons. Probably not much by your standards, but way more than enough to fatally irradiate and destroy all the good stuff on the surface of our planet, along with any of you who happen to be here. Think we won't use our bombs and missles? Hey, we're so messed up we have even used a few of them on ourselves! I don't know why, but we love to kill things, and annoying ET's are at the top of the list.

Travel can be really expensive, especially between parsecs. Maybe you have some "frequent traveller" points you can use to take a free trip. Ok, yeah that sentence is what we call a "joke." Seriously though, it would cost you way more to get here than anything we have is worth -- unless you have lost all of your own stuff. In that case, you would be coming here to establish a new home.

Sorry, but if you want El Mundo, we will fight you and destroy everything here before we would let you have it. As a matter of fact, by the time you arrive we will probably be just a smoking cinder anyway. So your whole vastly expensive journey would have been for nothing, unless you have need for a relatively worthless lump of melted iron and silicon. All may not be lost, however. We have several unoccupied planets here in our little group that might work you if you can invest some "sweat equity" and a boatload of ice.

Here are some directions you might find useful: About half a light year from us, there are a whole bunch of icy rocks called "The Oort Cloud." If you see any of those you want, feel free to take them. Where you're going, you will need a lot of ice. Oh, one of those icy rocks actually orbits around our star, and we call it "Pluto." Don't take that one -- it has some sentimental value and we have already named some stuff after it. We would also be interested in your opinion about Pluto's potential to become a real planet.

Pick up as much hydrogen as you can haul. You will need that too. Keep traveling and soon you will see a 5 huge gas balls. The one that's on fire is our star, called "The Sun." The other 4 are called Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter. Incidentally, there are some great moons orbiting around Saturn (the big planet with lots of rings) and Jupiter (the one with the big red spot and whispy rings). You could also pick up a bunch of hydrogen and ice there.

Next, watch for flying rocks. Lots of chunks that may have once been a planet. We call them Asteroids. Yeah, strange name I know. Then you will see a little red planet called "Mars." It might look interesting, but take my advice, it has no real potential, and if you want to see what it's all about, we can email you zillions of pictures. Kinda boring.

Ok, the blue, white, and green ball you see next is us. As I said before, don't come anywhere near us. And leave our moon alone too. It doesn't look like much, but we think it's pretty and we need it for stirring up our oceans. Also, there is a flag and a couple of golf carts there that we're kinda proud of. Yeah, that is the closest humans will ever get to "outer space." Hey, at least we boldly went camping in our own backyard. Don't laugh... nobody on our sister planets ever went anywhere.

Speaking of sister planets, ours is just up ahead. It's the white ball the same size as Earth. This is where you can use the hydrogen, water, oxygen, and anything else you brought with you. This planet is called Venus, and it looks gorgeous from here, but it wants nothing to do with humans.

Yes, that thick atmosphere is carbon dioxide. Yup, no hydrogen anywhere. You will have to turn pump in a bunch of it to create water. Throw in all the ice you can get, and then create a giant umbrella to shield the planet from the sun. Throw all the big rocks you can grab to get the planet rotating about 10 times faster than it is now, and you will soon have a really nice new home!

Oh… uh one more thing. That little planet that is closest to The Sun is loaded with valuable heavy elements like gold and uranium. You can have all of it on one condition: After we destroy our own planet, we will need to camp out on your new planet for awhile. Don't worry. There will only be a few of us.

Sincerely,

Jay McDougall Johnson

Football Friends with Benefits

I grew up as an only child and a severe asthmatic. Often, my parents wouldn't let me out of the house. I make friends kind of easily, and I have always loved to hang out with them. In the age
before video games, my strategy to becoming a gregarious shut-in was to get every board game
I could, learn how to play them all, and make up a bunch of new games involving hundreds of
plastic soldiers plus all my mom's hair curlers, wooden blocks, and a boatload of rubber bands.
All of this, plus my stand-up comedy routines and the home-made goodies my mom provided
made my house a popular after-school hangout.

Although I was an expert in most indoor games, and made up the rules for some of my own, I knew my friends would not keep coming back if I won all the time, or even most of the time. I was careful to win just enough to keep the competition interesting, but not enough to discourage anyone from playing. Thus, I intentionally failed at unimportant things to gain friendships. This was much better than paying cash for people to like me.

Now let's look at BYU football. The well-understood but seldom articulated goal for the program is to make friends for The Church. We want to save people from heck by not beating the heck out of them. Even an unobservant person can see this strategy at work. We like Florda State, and want to recruit Floridians. Yes, I admit, we COULD have made the game more interesting,
but I know from experience intentionally not quite winning is a razor's edge challenge, not an exact science.

Notice also that we let the Air Force Academy and University of Washington win every few years or so by way of intermittent reinforcement. Most of us know how amazingly effective that strategy is (think Vegas slot machines), and I think we need to get going on that kind of program with Florida State, Notre Dame, UCLA, and at least one of the SEC schools.

From: Provo, Utah, USA, Sixth planet in from the Oort cloud.

To: All carbon-based sentient beings residing at least one light year from me

If you are reading this, you must be a civilized, self-aware life form of some kind. You live close to us, at least in astronomical terms... 1 to 120 light years away. You have been getting a lot of accidental electromagnetic signals from us in the 500 kHz to 1600 MHz range. We call this stuff "spam." Most of the stuff you have received from our planet has probably been confusing for you, to say the least. To be honest, most of us can't make much sense out of it either.

Please ignore any images you have received in which any orafice is moving and making noise. Some of those sounds are called "speech," but the vast majority are what we call "idiotic nonsense." I apologize on behalf of all of us here. It was all accidental, I assure you.

You have probably been sending out signals also, but we have not been making much effort to receive them. The big reason for that is: our smartest science guy (he rides around in a wheeled chair) said you would probably destroy us if you ever got here. The idea is that if we don't know about you, we won't be worried.

I'm not a big-time science guy, but I think we should take a different approach. You have already picked up the really bad signals we sent out accidentally. If you have deciphered this message, you are smart enough to know that all those images of us meeting with beings from other planets are fake -- even that really cool "ET" movie. We call our planet by lots of names: Earth, Terra, Gaia, Home, El Mundo, or Third Rock. So we call beings from other planets "Extra Terrestrial," also known as "ET."

Maybe you ET's have decided to come my planet for an extended visit. Believe me, that would be a really dumb idea. Here is why: We have thousands of nuclear weapons. Probably not much by your standards, but way more than enough to fatally irradiate and destroy all the good stuff on the surface of our planet, along with any of you who happen to be here.

Think we won't use our bombs and missles? Hey, we're so messed up we have even used a few of them on ourselves! I don't know why, but we "humans" love to kill things, and annoying ET's are at the top of the list.

Travel can be really expensive, especially between parsecs. Maybe you have some "frequent traveller" points you can use to take a free trip. Ok, yeah that sentence is what we call a "joke." Seriously though, it would cost you way more to get here than anything we have is worth -- unless you have lost all of your own stuff. In that case, you would be coming here to establish a new home. Sorry, but if you want El Mundo, we will fight you and destroy everything here before we would let you have it. As a matter of fact, by the time you arrive we will probably be just a smoking cinder anyway.

So your whole vastly expensive journey would have been for nothing, unless you have need for a relatively worthless lump of melted iron and silicon. All may not be lost, however. We have several unoccupied planets here in our little group that might work you if you can invest some "sweat equity" and a boatload of ice.

Here are some directions you might find useful: About half a light year from us, there are a whole bunch of icy rocks called "The Oort Cloud." If you see any of those you want, feel free to take them. Where you're going, you will need a lot of ice. Oh, one of those icy rocks actually orbits around our star, and we call it "Pluto." Please don't take that one -- it has some sentimental value and we have already named stuff after it. We would also be interested in your opinion about Pluto's potential to become a real planet.

Pick up as much hydrogen as you can haul. You will need that too. Keep traveling and soon you will see 5 huge gas balls. The one that's on fire is our star, called "The Sun." The other 4 are called Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter. Incidentally, there are some great moons orbiting around Saturn (the big planet with lots of rings) and Jupiter (the one with the big red spot and whispy rings). You could also pick up a bunch of ice and maybe frozen oxygen from there.

Next, watch for flying rocks. Lots of chunks that may have once been a planet. We call them Asteroids. Yeah, strange name I know. Then you will see a little red planet called "Mars." It might look interesting, but take my advice, it has no real potential, and if you want to see what it's all about, we can email you zillions of pictures. Kinda boring.

Ok, the blue, white, and green ball you see next is us. As I said before, don't come anywhere near us. And leave our moon alone too. It doesn't look like much, but we think it's pretty and we need it for stirring up our oceans. Also, there is a flag and a couple of golf carts there that we're kinda proud of. Yeah, that is the closest humans will ever get to "outer space." Hey, at least we boldly went camping in our own backyard. Don't laugh... nobody on our sister planets ever went anywhere.

Speaking of sister planets, ours is just up ahead. It's the white ball the same size as Earth. This is where you can use the hydrogen, water, oxygen, and anything else you brought with you. This planet is called Venus, and it looks gorgeous from here, but it wants nothing to do with humans.

Yes, that thick atmosphere is carbon dioxide, and yup, no hydrogen anywhere. You will have to mix in a bunch of it to create water from the CO2. Throw in all the ice you can get, and then create a giant umbrella to shield the planet from the sun. Throw all the big rocks you can grab to get the planet rotating about 10 times faster than it is now, and you will soon have a really nice new home!

Oh… uh one more thing. That little planet that is closest to The Sun is loaded with valuable heavy elements like gold and uranium. You can have all of it on one condition: After we destroy our own planet, we will need to camp out on your new planet for awhile. Don't worry. There will only be a few of us.

Sincerely,

Jay McDougall Johnson

gifts for dad's birthday

See http://slas.us/ This is what I want for my birthday.

http://slas.us/images/MAPS/SPOC_Map.gif

a wall charger for my iPod
Shake Weight (19.95 online)
razor blades for my Norelco or a new rechargable Norelco
earbud covers
some itunes
Wii with guitar hero or rock band. Is there a keyboard available?
Anyway, we should get a new Wii
noise-cancelling headphones
paper jamz guitar, if it is not too dorky
a new logitech Marble Mouse
a lightweight long-sleeve shirt
An electric bicycle, or an electric motor/battery that will work with my Bike-E. Yeah, this is
way too expensive and not worth it at this point.

Boomers: drugged out before they were born.

The greatest generation was mostly born to mothers who practiced "natural" childbirth. The GG, however, almost universally gave birth to their children while the moms were drugged into comas. The general anesthesia drugs pumped into mom had effects on the babies.

Karen... a new kind of job: "hyper-local blogging"

The NY Times and other newspapers have hired people who are expert bloggers on greater NYC stuff. All they do is search and blog on what is happening in the local area. It's an actual job!