Death

I found out today that a peer of mine passed away last year. We had the same major in college. He was a really cool guy, who was doing cool things with his life. And now he is survived by his wife and child.

I don't know why, but finding out about his death and reading others' tributes to him had a really powerful effect on me. It made me realize how delicate life is. One moment you can be breathing, and performing other bodily functions and the next moment not.

Here's to life. Here's to living life to the fullest everyday. The only regret you should have each day is that it wasn't long enough.

Why I prefer a Mac over a PC

When I bought my first MacBook in 2007, I drank the Apple Kool-Aid deeply. I was a big fan. But over the years, as the number of programs I installed increased, as the storage space decreased, and as the average complexity of software increased, I became somewhat less excited with Macs. Also, because I had the old 10.4 Tiger OS, there became a number of programs that I couldn't run or update. I thought about going back to a PC. Who knows, I thought, maybe the new Windows 7 made some significant strides in catching up with Macs. My chance came when I had to buy a PC for my job.

I went to Best Buy and bought a brand new Acer Aspire with 2.13 Ghz duo-core Pentium processor with 4 GB of ram and a 500 GB hard-drive for $300. I then sold my 5-year old, that had a Pentium processor duo-core 2.16 Ghz, 1GB of ram MacBook for $300. Even though the free market said that the deal was equivalent, I thought I got a better deal by buying the Acer because it was brand new. I would soon find out that even though 5 years had passed, my MacBook was the better deal. Here are four ways that illustrate this.

Superior DVD players - I don't really understand how DVD players work, and I don't know how much of the DVD experience is due to the software or the hardware, but this much I do know: MacBooks play DVDs a lot better than other products. I have some DVDs that I cannot play on my laptop or the standalone DVD player. But put that disc in a MacBook and there is no hesitation. My analysis may be biased because I have lower-end types of DVD players (i.e. Acer laptop, and a relatively cheap Sony DVD player), but the point is that Apple excels at video content.

Processing power and memory (efficient and strong and powerful) - I expected that since I had quadrupled my ram in my new purchase, that I would be able to have all sorts of programs open at the same time with little to no lag. I was disappointed when the first day I was waiting abnormally long for a couple tabs to run at the same time (one of which was a video playing). The fluidity and seamlessness of running programs on a new MacBook cannot be overstated. It's a magical experience.

Reboots - One thing that I have always hated about Windows is the number of reboots that are required. You ever have a problem and the first recommendation is to reboot. Install a new program? Reboot. System update? Reboot. I thought that some of this would change with Windows 7, but unfortunately that is not the case. Not only am I pestered with annoying popups on a regular basis that I need to restart my laptop for a security update, the longest I can delay the reminder is 4 hours. The other annoying thing is that if you are not attending to your computer when this notice appears, it will restart automatically closing the programs you were running. I hate this more than almost anything.

Quick reboot (turn on) - I was spoiled over the years by my MacBook by getting accustomed to opening up my laptop, and being able to immediately get to work. The PC is not very instantaneous at all. Windows 7 has made improvements since XP, but nowhere near where Apple has been for a long time.

There are other features that I like about Macs, but these are the main ones. In sum, Apple is way ahead of the curve. If you are debating about the two, and you want your computer to last a long time, go with your gut and choose an Apple product.

Angry Birds Space review

I have a secret love of playing video games. I don't get to indulge it that often anymore now that I'm all grown up, but over the past few months of my wife getting to use an iPad at work, I have beat all free Angry Birds levels for each variety, with relative ease. Along comes Angry Birds Space...

This variety of Angry Birds is like no other variety. There are different structures, different birds, and different gravities. In sum, it has a lot of interesting new features.

I found the dotted lines to project where your bird is going to fly a helpful, but perhaps unnecessary crutch. Maybe Roxio is aiming at a dumber audience.

I found the multiple gravities really well-played. My one gripe is from a Physics perspective. If an object like a planet has gravity, it will attract birds if it is flying barely outside the planet's gravity. This game made it seem like gravity only works once a predetermined threshold of distance has been met. Maybe this threshold does exist for noticeable degrees of gravitational pull, but to me if a planet can pull in an atmosphere at the threshold's limit, then it can at least alter a bird's flying trajectory when it passes very close.

I still beat the game quite quickly, but it was a lot more challenging than other Angry Birds varieties. In fact, there was a level that I literally could not beat for a while no matter what I did. I think with these levels sometimes you just have to get a lucky bounce.

Anyway, if you haven't downloaded the newest Angry Birds, I highly recommend it.

The feasibility of a plant-based diet

I have always been a fan of eating lots of fruits and vegetables. I can't even remember being a very picky eater, and growing up on tomato and corn fields certainly cemented the love of plants hard.

I've also been a hesitant meat eater the past few years. Don't get me wrong, I definitely have eaten a lot of meat but on the back of my mind it's been as if my conscience was calling out in resistance to my meat-eating. You see, my brother had a couple close calls with cancer and my dad embarked on a crusade to help him. Because the medical community doesn't have all the answers, he pursued knowledge in alternative medicine including nutrition. And like a good father, my dad has shared his knowledge with me over the course of the past 8 years.

Part of those findings is that your diet can greatly influence your health, even the big diseases that have strong genetic components such as cancer. After talking to medical professionals and "experts" in the nutritional field, I grew skeptical of my dad's claims that nutrition can do that much for cancer. According to my sources, there just wasn't enough data to support the claim. And because everyone is different, what works for one person may not work for another.

That being said, I have still kind of believed my dad's claim that nutrition can have a really big effect on a person's health and I've tried to watch what I eat. I just haven't taken it that seriously.

Last night, I watched the movie Forks over Knives. For those who haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. If you have Netflix, that's the easiest way to watch it. The movie is in documentary format and details two perspectives (clinical and research) to come to the same conclusion, that we humans get a lot more disease and suffering because of the animal products and processed foods we consume. Further, switching to a completely plant based diet stops the progression of many of these diseases and can even reverse them.

Because of my experiences, and because I am not a meat fanatic, the film resonated with me. A couple of the premises of the movie didn't sit too well with me. For instance, how our medical community wants us to stay sick so they can have good business. I've heard this argument with regards to cancer, that a cure to cancer is being withheld because then it's a big money-making industry for a lot of people. I can't believe that people in the medical field would consciously do this to people especially because they most likely have loved ones who are affected by it. I would hope that mankind has not devolved into something that bad.

I think more likely is that there has of yet been inconclusive data supporting alternative medicine and these researchers do not have an incentive to do the research. Yes, a cure to cancer would be an incentive, but to go outside the mainstream of thinking is difficult to do. There seems to be adequate incentives in place for researchers to do their thing.

The only thing stopping me from trying a plant based diet is cheese. I really don't think I could go without it. Assuming there's a decent substitute to cheese, it would be a challenge to come up with new food ideas. This takes time. It would also be more expensive. The pure unprocessed foods are traditionally more expensive in general. Plus, by eating a lot more fruits and vegetables instead of denser foods, I could see myself eating a lot more. I eat a ton of food. So maybe when I've got some more time and money, I'll give this thing a try.

Cooperation is a necessary evil?

It's great when you can learn about a particular topic, it's even more great when that same topic gets retaught in another medium. Yesterday included a couple big learning moments on cooperation. These moments included chimps, Jet Li, and the Tea Party. 

First, a program on NPR called RadioLabs featured chimps. The program looked at the way that humans behave based on very instinctual and primal evolutionary thought processes. So naturally, they started looking at one of our closest relatives. My favorite part of the program was when a delicious berry reed was dropped into a pack of chimps, specifically to the adolescents of the group. One of them picked it up, then others started fighting for it, and then squabbling. You could hear the chaos by the shrieking. Then there was a very abrupt silence to all the fighting. Apparently the alpha male had made an appearance and everyone knew what they were supposed to do. The alpha male continued to eat some of the reed, then it got passed on to the next highest male and on. According to this evolutionary system, the food always goes from the highest on the ladder downward. While one animal wouldn't get all he wanted, every animal in the pack would at least get something. The commentator remarked that evolution had favored this type of order because cooperation was necessary for survival. And there my first learning moment was, cooperation is a good thing for survival. 

Next, I watched the Jet Li movie Fearless while the Aimers did her school stuff. Here, a hotshot go-getter was out to show the world that he was a great fighter using the art of Wushu. Then a series of events fundamentally changed his perspective about his order. He realized what his father and many others had known all along: that his Wushu order was all about respecting others and cooperating. Without that, there was no purpose and only death. Thus, my second learning moment: cooperation is crucial for success. 

Finally, I started thinking about the GOP party right now. While everyone will have to admit that the Tea Party has been a very influential factor in politics the last couple years, it has also been known as a very "loud" and uncompromising voice. Maybe they have been loud because they have needed to get their voices heard. Maybe they have felt like their views and opinions had been ignored for too long. Maybe they have come across as uncompromising because their views have been more correct than the alternative. Because they felt like they were right, why should they cooperate? I think that in a GOP primary where candidates are increasingly being called on to proceed more and more to the right, it is sad that cooperation is being viewed as a thing of the past. Changes occur often times gradually and without cooperation, we will not win as a society. We will instead be denigrated to squabbling chimps. Like Jet Li, we need to respect, honor and cooperate with those around us.

An update to the shifting y

I found that the shifted y is only in the newest version of the scriptures. Think new maps edition or thin pages if you are referring to the book of mormon as a standalone. Since my wife recently gifted me a new quad, that's why I hadn't noticed any text anomalies because they weren't there. I have highlighted another verse that illustrates my point a little bit more clearly. The verse is mosiah 2:36. As you can see, starting with the fourth line, there is a divide with the left side of the verse subscripted and the right side regular. Line 4 is the most obvious because the fault line occurs in the middle of the word "ye." The second line "go contrary to" is left of the fault. This continues until the 9th line where the line contains no shifts.

My theory? I think this shift pattern is a result of either capitalizations or footnotes (notice how these make the line taller than usual) coupled with letters that go below the line (like p's or y's). If one line is abnormally tall in height and the line preceding it contains some low hanging characters, a predetermined line buffer may not be sufficient to avoid crowding. It appears that the new publication attempts to compress lines in sections rather than uniformly make a predetermined buffer for each line to solve this problem.

This theory does not clarify why in my original observation of Mosiah 2:31 the y is shifted. If you look to the very next line, there's a capital G which makes that line abnormally tall. The line with the shifted y has no reason to shift the y down to get even closer to the next line. To maintain the same buffer of space, if the publishers wanted to do any shifting here, it should have been up. This means that I am open to ideas for what is going on.

Mysteries of the Kingdom

I don't know how many times I've read the Book of Mormon (probably more than 30), but every time I read the book, I get new insights and perspectives. Last night as I was reading in the book of Mosiah, something caught my eye that I have never seen before, a mystery in my eyes. Mosiah 2 is King Benjamin addressing the people. Midway through verse 31, there is a my that has the "y" shifted down. I checked another Book of Mormon to make sure the shift was not just in my set and sure enough the same shifted "y" was there. I probably would never have noticed this, but for strange talents that you develop at law school.

The question remains, what is the purpose of this shifted y? How did it happen? And will my brother's digital Book of Mormon ipad app maintain the integrity of the printed version of the Book of Mormon by making sure the shifted y is preserved.