Instructions for a Baby Bottle

When the baby is done drinking, it must be unscrewed and laid in a cool place under the tap. If the baby does not thrive on fresh milk, it should be boiled.

Age Test

Escape

Sugar Plum Fairy by P.Tchaikovsky - Glass Harp

Watch this amazing video:

Merry Christmas!

How to Deal With People Who Cut in Line

Learn more about "chat cuts" from Lifehacker.

Sharp Edges

Doing Nothing

The hardest part about doing nothing is knowing when you're through.

Bankers

"A banker is a person who is willing to make a loan if you present sufficient evidence to show you don't need it." --Herbert V. Prochnow

The Future

"The future is as bright as your faith."

--Christian Hollingsworth

Wise Men

If there had been three wise women who went to Bethlehem, they would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a meal, and brought some practical gifts.

When Was Jesus Actually Born?

Does Doctrine and Covenants 20:1 suggest that April 6 should be regarded as the exact date of the Savior’s birth? The article "Dating the Birth of Jesus Christ" says probably not.

Elder James E. Talmage, in the book Jesus the Christ, was apparently the first LDS writer to propose that Jesus was born on April 6 in the year 1 BC.

However, today, virtually all hard evidence, scriptural and otherwise, points to a narrow window of time at the beginning of winter for the birth of the Savior, and that Jesus was quite likely born in December of the year 5 BC.

Latter-day prophets from Joseph Smith to Lorenzo Snow made no specific comments on the date of Jesus’s birth.

During the 20th century, 3 different LDS Apostles published major studies on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and in them offered models for the date of Jesus’s birth:

1. Elder James E. Talmage (see above).

2. President J. Reuben Clark, of the First Presidency, published Our Lord of the Gospels in 1954, which was used as the Melchizedek Priesthood manual in 1958. In it, he pointed to the traditional early winter time frame for the date of Jesus’s birth. He explained: “I am not proposing any date as the true date. But in order to be as helpful to students as I could, I have taken as the date of the Savior’s birth the date now accepted by many scholars,—late 5 b.c. or early 4 b.c. In the timetables he employed in his book, Clark listed his preferred time range for Jesus’s nativity as December of 5 bc, and the time range of the Annunciation to Mary as nine months earlier in March of 5 bc.

3. Elder Bruce R. McConkie, in The Mortal Messiah, reviewed the positions and reasoning of both Talmage and Clark with regard to Jesus’s birth date and stated that he would follow Clark’s course. Accordingly, McConkie dated the Annunciation to Mary in March or April of 5 bc, and the birth of Jesus in December of 5 bc (with the caveat that his birth could also have occurred from January to April of 4 bc).

It seems there is no authoritative agreement or position on the issue of the birth date of Christ that can be regarded as authoritative.

Don't Throw Away Mail

Thank goodness I noticed this warning before I chucked this envelope. Because everyday I go to the mailbox, gather up all the mail, and take it straight to the garbage can.

:-)

Amazing Sale

Found via Christian Hollingsworth

Make No Small Plans

"Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul." - Niccolo Machiavelli

Listen

"If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less." Courtois' Rule

Telemarketers

If a telemarketer calls, give the telephone to your 3-year-old and tell her it's Santa.

Learn from Past Meetings

"Those who are unable to learn from past meetings are condemned to repeat them." --McKernan's Maxim

Simple Jobs

"There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong." --Perrussel's Law

Center of the Universe

Save $27,000 and 4 Years on Your Mortgage

Make 1 extra mortgage payment each year applied to principal and it will shave off $27,000 in interest and 4 years off a 30-year mortgage (4.5% interest $200,000 mortgage). Fund it with a bonus or tax refund.

Desk of the Future

EXOpc has posted a video of its EXOdesk — an interactive desk environment that lets you do all sorts of tasks on a virtual space on your desk — in action and it looks amazing.

The actual device is a tabletop computer, somewhat similar to Microsoft Surface, offering 40 inches of high definition space, where you can manipulate virtual objects by touching them and dragging them around.

The video offers a taste of what you can do with EXOdesk: add a virtual keyboard, an RSS feed stream and apps to your tabletop surface. A piano simulation app is shown, and though we don’t see much of its functionality, it looks stunning when expanded to the entire surface of EXOdesk.

Although the release date is vaguely set for 2012, we already know EXOdesk will cost $1,299. If that sounds like a lot, compare it to the recently announced price of Microsoft Surface 2.0, which is $8,900, and it will suddenly seem like a bargain.

Dancing With An iPod in Public - Footloose

Video by PrestonLeatherman: I had this idea to go to a public place (in this case...the local shopping mall) and dance like no one's business....the only catch is, there is an iPod in my ear, so no one else around me can hear the music.

Heads turned. Jaws Dropped. Hilarity Ensued.

Shot at Memorial City Mall in Houston, TX 7/18/11.

New Bible Videos about the Life of Jesus Christ

During tonight's Christmas devotional, the First Presidency announced the publication of new videos portraying the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. These short videos are a gift to the world from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The videos are available online at "The Life of Jesus Christ Bible Videos" (biblevideos.lds.org). Today, there are 6 videos related to the Savior’s birth. During the coming months, more videos will be added to this inspiring collection, which will eventually include over 100 videos depicting scenes from Christ’s life, ranging from the angel foretelling Christ’s birth to the Savior's Resurrection.

• The website and videos are in English (biblevideos.lds.org), Spanish (videosdelabiblia.org), and Portuguese (VideosBiblicos.org). Each video is accompanied by the scriptural text from the King James Version of the Bible. The website is optimized for desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The website's media player is the same used in other Church websites and is compatible with most devices.
• A free iPad app is also available through the App Store. It offers a new way to experience Bible stories through sight, sound, and touch. It includes all the videos from the website, as well as maps, photo slideshows, and biblical facts. The app is currently available in English, but Portuguese and Spanish are coming, as well as additional platforms.
• The videos have a very liberal policy on sharing and reuse. “We want to help our own members strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ, and we offer this freely to other churches who may wish to use these videos in a similar way” said Elder Lynn G. Robbins, Executive Director of the Media Services Department. The Terms of Use state that "Unless otherwise indicated, you may view, download, share, post on a Web site, publically display, and otherwise use the Services only for personal, home, non-profit, or church use, which is both incidental and noncommercial."
• Subscribe by RSS or e-mail (in the footer of the website) to receive updates when new videos are added.
• A Share button is found at the top of each page to easily share the videos through Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. There is also an option to send a video as an e-card with a personal message.

Below is an introductory video explaining more about this gift.




The videos come from footage shot at the Church’s new LDS Motion Picture Studio South Campus in Goshen, Utah, where filming for the New Testament Scripture Library Project began in August of this year. The project will yield more than 100 vignettes portraying the life of Christ, taken directly from the text of the King James Version of the Bible. The goal is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ by assembling one of the finest collections of Bible videos in the world.

The Life of Jesus Christ Bible Videos website is intended to provide people throughout the world with a new and meaningful way to learn about and share the teachings of Jesus Christ. Through these videos, individuals can explore biblical environments, watch scripture-based stories come to life, view slideshows, and discover additional insights into biblical accounts.

Please watch and share these videos with family and friends and use them in Church assignments. As you learn about the life and teachings of our Savior, you will come to know Him more deeply, and your testimony of His gospel will grow. Who can you think of right now that you can share this website with?

Learn more.

Christmas and Deficits

Christmas is when kids tell Santa what they want, and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want, and their kids pay for it.

Societal advances, founding of LDS Church coincided

I've long noticed that remarkable advances in science and many other fields really took off around the year 1830 when the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded. The vast majority of scientific and technological advances that we enjoy today have occurred since 1830. Progress prior to then was slow and plodding. Life at the beginning of the 19th century was roughly the same as it had been 5,000 years earlier. But something happened around 1830 that changed the course of human civilization. The influence was the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the return of His priesthood power to the earth.

You may be interested in reading the following article "Societal advances, founding of LDS Church coincided" by Dan Peterson, published in the Deseret News on Aug. 11, 2011:

In an entry recently written for "Mormon Scholars Testify," economist and economic historian Mark Skousen highlights the remarkable changes that occurred around the year 1830 — the year in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded.

Two decades ago, he reports, he was struck by a 1991 book titled "The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830," written by the eminent British historian Paul Johnson. Johnson devotes more than a thousand pages to a mere 15 years that, he contends, changed the course of human history and founded the modern world.

Skousen concurs, pointing to the dramatic economic growth and the sustained rise in the standard of living that began around that time for many (though, sadly, not yet all) of the world's inhabitants.

The vast majority of scientific and technological advances have occurred since 1830. Progress prior to then was slow and plodding. Material life at the opening of the 19th century was roughly the same as it had been 2,000 or even 5,000 years earlier. People got around, for instance, on foot, on animals, or in vehicles pulled by animals, or else in boats powered by wind or by oarsmen. This was no less true for George Washington than for Tutankhamen and Julius Caesar.

Medical science as we know it scarcely existed in 1800. For example, when George Washington died at the end of 1799 (probably of acute epiglottitis after a chill), he was only 67, and had still been quite vigorous. But his doctors, trying to eliminate "bad humors" and following a practice already ancient at the time of Galen (d. roughly 200 AD), had "bled" him of approximately 50 percent of his blood. (In pre-modern English, physicians were sometimes termed "leeches." This had nothing to do with exorbitant medical fees.)

Nowadays, President Washington would have been treated with antibiotics. Such medicines, along with anesthesia, vaccines, x-rays, CAT scans, MRI technology, open heart surgery and a host of other healthcare breakthroughs, have fundamentally altered, and extended, our way of life.

Now we travel in elevators and automobiles, on motorized ships (including submarines) sometimes even powered by nuclear fission, and in helicopters and jets. (Occasionally, we exit the earth's atmosphere via rockets.) Photography, the telegraph, air conditioning, gas refrigeration, light bulbs, telephones, radio, television, computers, fax machines, CDs and the Internet have revolutionized our world.

Another book cited by Skousen is UCLA historian Daniel Walker Howe's 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner, "What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848."

Is it mere coincidence that the founding events of Mormonism occurred during this transformative era?

Perhaps.

Skousen also cites financial economist William Bernstein's 2004 volume, "The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created." Bernstein, who holds both a medical doctorate and a Ph.D. in chemistry but has made his name in the technical discipline of "portfolio theory," pinpoints 1820 as the specific year in which modern economic growth began to explode.

That was, of course, also the year in which, Latter-day Saints believe, the Father and the Son appeared to Joseph Smith, launching the Restoration of the gospel and opening its final dispensation.

Again, coincidence?

Maybe.

But maybe, too, it's part of a divine plan that includes, but is not limited to, the restoration of the church. As Skousen observes, the first section of the Doctrine and Covenants, often regarded as the Lord's preface to the book, is not only apocalyptic and admonitory but "brimming with optimism about the 'last days.'"

And not only that first section:

"And, as I, the Lord, in the beginning cursed the land, even so in the last days have I blessed it, in its time, for the use of my saints, that they may partake the fatness thereof" (Doctrine and Covenants 61:17).

"What power shall stay the heavens?" Joseph Smith asked from his dark Missouri jail cell in 1839. "As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints" (Doctrine and Covenants 121:33).

Believing Saints rejoice with Parley Pratt:
The morning breaks; the shadows flee;
Lo, Zion's standard is unfurled!
The dawning of a brighter day
Majestic rises on the world.

Daniel C. Peterson is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at BYU, where he also serves as editor in chief of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative and as director of outreach for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He is the founder of MormonScholarsTestify.org.