Quick Post

Sorry there hasn't been much posted these last few weeks. Life has been very confusing for me lately, and I haven't felt the urge to spill my guts on the World Wide Web.... yet.

That reminds me. Does anybody say "World Wide Web" anymore? Typing it in that last sentence felt awkward and strange. It sounds so 1995 to use those words. Nowdays everybody uses the word "Internet" (or "Internets" if you're the President).

Anyway, I'm still working on the Mormon Part III post. I'd like to wrap the trilogy up and move on, but it's difficult to come up with the right things to say. Religion is a very personal topic, and I want to treat it right.

While you're waiting, though, please enjoy a few photos of my brother attending VEISHEA 2006:Sometimes we call him "Mack Daddy". You can see why.Standing next to CY with his eyes closed, his thumb up, and wearing a Math Club t-shirt. Human beings do not get any cooler than this, folks.

He's my brother! I love my brother!

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Mormon Story Part Two!

My first meeting with the Mormons was interesting, if only because of the tour they gave me of their temple. The religious conversation was mostly covering the basics of "this is what I believe tell me what you believe". They gave me a book of Mormon and asked me to read a few chapters from it. I read them, but it didn't stick. We agreed to meet in one week at the temple to talk again.

During that week I read the recommended chapters from the Book of (Nephi? Moroni? Mosiah?). It reminded me of Old Testament books, because the story was about a prophet telling people that they were sinners and would suffer God's wrath if they didn't repent. Standard stuff. But what struck me as odd about this reading was that Joseph Smith used "thee" and "thou" and "ye". That's fine if he was writing this in 1611, when the King James Translation was made. Except the Book of Mormon was started in 1829, long after that language fell out of fashion. My only guess is that he used those words to match the style of the KJV, which Mormons consider to be the most accurate translation of the Bible. At the second meeting I asked the Elders about it, and they didn't know the reason either.

The main topic of the second and third meetings was The Plan of Happiness. In short, this was the whole timeline from Pre-Creation to Post-Armageddon of where humans come from, what they must do to achieve total salvation, and the levels of "heaven" available to them. I have no intention of going through the entire Plan here, but can offer some comparisons between Mormonism and Lutheranism, since I know that one best. Here they are, in complete chronological order:

1) Pre-mortal existence: Mormons believe that all humans existed with God before being born, and at that time chose Jesus to be their Savior. If they had not, they would have been cast out of Heaven with the Devil. After being born on Earth, humans forget their pre-mortal existence. Lutheranism does not have this.

2) Spirit World: After death but before The Resurrection (2nd coming of Christ), human's bodies go into the ground and their souls enter the Spirit World. In the Spirit World the souls can exist in either Paradise or Prison, depending on the human's faith and behavior on Earth. Souls that enter Prison in the Spirit World can enter Paradise, but they must first accept Jesus and be baptized. The problem is, only a physical being can be baptized. This is why Mormons keep extensive genealogical records. They use these records for baptism-by-proxy where a person on Earth is baptized for a soul assumed to be in the Spirit World Prison. It is basically a second chance where if you rejected Jesus on Earth you can still accept him after death. Lutheranism does not offer such second chances. You screw up on Earth, and it's Hell for you.

3) Post-Resurrection: Again, depending on your faith and behavior humans have 3 different Kingdoms in which they can exist. The highest is the Celestial Kingdom, which is where God is. Only people who believed in Jesus and lived a good life on Earth go here. The next level is the Terrestrial Kingdom, where you are near God, but not with him. The Elders described this as a "type of Hell", because you will spend Eternity knowing you could of done better. They gave no description of flames and burning, though. I think you go here if you lived a good life but didn't believe in Jesus. Finally, the worst people (bad lives AND didn't believe) go to the Telestial Kingdom. The Elders didn't describe this place much, but they did say that all three places are considered Heaven. It's just that some Heavens were better than others. Lutheranism has one Heaven and one Hell. You must believe in Jesus to go to Heaven, where God is. All others go to Hell, where it is really hot. Too hot.

In general, the Plan Of Happiness wasn't much different from the Plan Of Salvation in Lutheranism. On Earth, you must repent of your sins, believe in Jesus, and live a good life. The only real differences between the two religions are in the details.

Stayed tuned for Part Three with the dramatic conclusion!

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Happy Easter! Mormon Story Part One!

Hello! It's been a long time since I've posted, yes. My research project has been getting lots of attention these days, which is good. Sometimes, though I get a little too intent and ignore everything else. I can spend several days in a row without even leaving my apartment, just working on my computer simulation, reading books and watching movies. My roommates are probably sick of seeing me every time they come home.

Tomorrow is Easter and my roommates all left to go to their parent's homes to celebrate. They did this yesterday (Friday), but it took me until this morning to realize it. It was so quiet around here yesterday and last night, and then this morning when I didn't hear anyone get up I finally made the connection. See the above paragraph for reasons.

Juan Valdez (aka, anyone who doesn't want to leave their name) asked about the Mormon visit, so here it is:

My visit with the Mormons was not simply a one time event. Nay, it was three visits, topped off by a volleyball game. They're persistent, that's for sure.

The first time we met was at Jakominiplatz, the public transportation hub of Graz. They asked me if I wanted to talk somewhere around there or if I wanted to go to the temple, a 20 minute tram ride away. Having never seen a Mormon temple before, I chose the tram ride.

The temple was located on the Western side of Graz, in what I guess you could call the suburbs. Trams still run out into these areas, but you can see how car transportation slowly becomes more dominant. After getting off the tram, we had to walk another block to the temple, located between houses and looking very much like a Suburban America church/temple built in the 1980's. They gave me a tour of the temple and pointed out some key characteristics of Mormon temples, which had an interesting contrast to Protestant and Catholic churches.

The first area I was shown was the sanctuary, where services were held. It had lots of plain light wood trim, with orangey looking carpet, and pews. It also had an altar area, but I don't remember if it had a pulpit or not. Nothing surprising, really. One of the elders pointed out, and I wouldn't have noticed it unless he had, that there were no crucifixes in the sanctuary. The reason, he said, was that they want to focus on Jesus’ life and teachings and not his death. It sounded like a glass half-full versus half-empty sort of philosophy.

The next room I saw was right behind the sanctuary, one of those all-purpose rooms that many churches have. It had the stage with curtain, the high ceilings, and the sliding wall. A place where you would have pot lucks and other social gatherings. The sliding wall connected this room to the sanctuary to increase capacity, and the elder told me that they had to use it every Sunday because many people came to worship.

The temple had lots of other small rooms like classrooms, with doors and windows so you could see inside. I wasn't shown them because there really wasn't anything to see. What they DID show me, though, was the room where they perform baptisms. This was very cool. It had a special name I've since forgotten, but this room was quite unique. They use full-immersion baptisms in the LDS church, so this room basically had a giant bathtub built into the floor. It was about 1.5 meters wide by 3 meters long (5 foot by 9 foot) and about 1.5 meters (5 foot) deep. The sides and floor were covered in light blue 3 by 3 inch ceramic tiles, as were the steps leading down into it. The side of the bathtub was open from the floor level on up to people could view the baptisms. There was a railing with a glass panel below it so spectators couldn't fall in. Definitely the highlight of the tour for me!

After the tour we went into one of those non-descript rooms, sat on some chairs in a circle, and began to talk religion. They asked me about my beliefs and listened patiently while I described what I was raised to believe and what I believe today. Then they asked me if I knew much about the Mormon church, and were a bit a surprised when I gave them quite a few details about it. From attending a Lutheran High School, I was taught a lot about other religions and how they compare to the Lutheran faith. Also, a good friend of mine from back home is Mormon and she educated me on some of the finer points...

Some Mormon trivia: If you watch the movie "Napoleon Dynamite", you see the main character wearing a Rick's College t-shirt. That school is now called Brigham Young University Idaho.

The main thing I learned from our first conversation was that Mormons believe in continual revelation. Not sure if that is the correct term, but it means that they believe that prophets in the church, as well as individual believers, can still today be spoken to by God. Right now the current Head Prophet (again, my term, not theirs) is Gordon Hinckley. To me this setup sounds similar to Catholicism and the Pope. A central authority figure has a direct connection to God and church members look to him for guidance on doctrine.

This would be a good place to mention that I am not trying to disparage any religious belief. My intent is describe, to the best of my understanding, how these religions function. If I am in error or you disagree, please post a comment. I suggest using Juan Valdez as a name if you prefer anonymity.

For the sake of brevity I am ending this post. More details about my meetings and the volleyball game will follow. Happy Easter!

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Make Your Own Chevy Tahoe Commercial

General Motors is trying something different to get people interested in their new Tahoe. They've launched a website where you can make your own commercials. You pick the action shots, the soundtrack, and add some words to sell their SUV. Apparently, the best commercial will win some kind of prize. I didn't check. I'm not entering.

So you can put whatever words you want in front of sweeping camera views of the Chevy Tahoe. Obviously this sort of advertising is ripe for abuse. To entertain myself, I made several commercials extolling the global warming virtues of this 13 MPG wonder.

If you don't feel creative, just surf over to YouTube and see what commercials others have uploaded.

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Me and The Mayor of Graz...

....we're pretty tight. We just hammered out an economic deal where all the beer I buy in Graz is half price. We're shaking hands to seal the agreement.

There was a reception this afternoon at the Rathaus (city hall) for the exchange students. They took us into this fancy room that reminded me of the Senate Chambers in the Iowa Capitol building. The Bürgermeister (mayor) came in and welcomed us to Graz and wished us a pleasant stay. Five minutes before this, Doris, who is in charge of the exchange programs here asked me if I would stand up and thank the mayor for visiting us. So I didn't listen too closely to what he said, I was too busy trying to think of what I was going to say in front of all those people. Fortunately, I didn't hyperventilate and was able to say a few sentences about how we appreciated him taking the time to see us.

After that, they let us out onto the balcony of the Rathaus which overlooks Hauptplatz. It was a beautiful day:

Then we had some appetizers and wine, and people got to chat with the mayor and take photos. I was worried about being underdressed with just a polo shirt and jeans, but another exchange student, wearing a t-shirt, baseball cap and jeans, had his photo with the mayor. The mayor even took off the guy's hat and wore it himself for a picture.

UPDATE: Another picture of me with the Bürgermeister (corrected spelling) is available on the City of Graz website. Also, the Technical University of Graz has more photos from the event on their News Page.

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Card/Board Games (or: How can I get a hold of you?)

Last night I attended a game night at a Studentenheim (dormitory) of a friend. There were six of us there, and we hung out in the common room playing Fluxx, Metro, and a game called Carcassonne. The Carcassonne game reminded me a bit of Settlers of Catan but not as fun. I wasn't any good at it, either and was quite happy when we moved to another game. The Metro game involved making train tracks to get your trains from one point to another and blocking your opponents paths, which appealed to both my engineering brain and diabolical nature. Fluxx was a strange card game. The best way I can describe it is to say it was like UNO, but infinitely more complicated. The deck consisted of four different types of cards: Keepers, New Rules, Actions, and Goals. All of the cards had several sentences' worth of instructions written on them in English. You should know that I was the only native English speaker there. This made for a very slow game, and I think several people got frustrated by it. I liked it, because the game was always changing (a state of Flux, perhaps?).

What really struck me last night was how well these 5 exchange students could communicate with each other. The group consisted of:

1) an Austrian guy who spoke German and English
2) a German guy who spoke German and English
3) a Dutch girl who spoke Dutch, English, and German
4) an Italian girl who spoke Italian, English, and German
5) a Finnish girl who spoke Finnish, English, German AND Italian(!)
6) an American guy who spoke English and broken German (guess who!)

They may have known more languages, but those are the ones I noticed. Most of the conversation was split between German and English. When the other 5 were talking to each other they used German, but they would switch to English if they needed to explain rules or we were all talking. The Italian and Finnish girls would sometimes converse in Italian, and the German and Austrian guys would often launch into rapid-fire German conversations. I don't blame them, either. Speaking in one's native tongue to another native speaker is such a comfort. I know that I like talking to other Americans where I don't have to pare down my vocabulary to the simple words, slow down my pace of speaking, and remove all idioms.

That reminds me. Never say, "How can I can get a hold of you?" to a non-native speaker. It's both confusing and a bit scary for them to hear that.

So I was impressed with these students' ability to talk to each other and be understood in both their own language, but also in a second language. Being able to express yourself simply, yet clearly, in another language besides your native tongue amazes me. I could understand most of the German being spoken, so hearing them string words into sentences and sentences into thoughts and ideas that were unstandable was just.... so..... cool. People are amazing sometimes. I have trouble articulating my thoughts in English, while others are doing it in 3 languages.

That reminds me. I need to work on German homework this weekend.

But now, I need to work on my taxes. April 15th is coming up.

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