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1. Beck, Mormonism and Evangelicalism
2. Beck and Social Justice
3. Clark Pinnock Dies

Zoodles website link

Zoodles is a Glubble like product. It lets you create a family profile and add each kid, but it is focused on education. What’s more, it has this amazing reporting back-end that allows partents to look at what the kids are learning based on areas like reading, math, science, etc.

I was looking around for a game tonight on my phone to entertain (and educate) my 5 year old preschooler and just ran across this on my android phone. It is a free download to install.

I was very pleased when she opened it and it had a ton of the Starfall games (another great website for young preschool learners) right on my phone. She had a blast.

Unfortunately it costs about $5/month to track what the kids are doing, but it lets the kids keep playing even if you don’t have an account to see what they are doing.

Of course I went ahead and set up profiles for all the rest of my kids and they had appropriate stuff for them as well.

I’m so losing my phone for the next couple of weeks to the kids… and I’m okay with that.

Below is an updated list of all the official Facebook pages for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We invite you to click through and “like” each one if you want to get important information about each topic delivered to your Facebook account. We encourage you to comment and share and participate in the conversation where appropriate!

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (http://facebook.com/lds)
• Mormon.org (http://facebook.com/mormon)
• LDS Newsroom (http://facebook.com/ldsnewsroom)
• Mormon Messages (http://facebook.com/mormonmessages)
• Mormon Channel (http://facebook.com/mormonchannel)
• Ensign Magazine (http://facebook.com/ensignmagazine)
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• Friend Magazine (http://facebook.com/friendmagazine)
• Liahona Magazine (http://facebook.com/liahonamagazine)
• Church History Museum (http://facebook.com/churchhistorymuseum)
• Church History Library (http://facebook.com/churchhistorylibrary)
• FamilySearch Indexing (http://facebook.com/familysearchindexing)
• LDS Seminary (http://facebook.com/ldsseminary)
• LDS Institute (http://facebook.com/ldsinstitute)
• LDS Tech (http://facebook.com/ldstech)
• LDS Mobile Applications (http://facebook.com/ldsmobile)
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir (http://facebook.com/MormonTabernacleChoir)
• Joseph Smith Papers (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Joseph-Smith-Papers/54051677972)
• Pages for the countries of Germany (http://facebook.com/mormonen), Italy (http://facebook.com/MormoniItalia), and Portugal (http://facebook.com/MormonsPortugal).

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Some new features:

• Great new search (try out the facets!)
• Prophets and Apostles Speak Today
• Church News and Events
• Church Organization
• Temples
• Humanitarian Service
• “Our Heavenly Father’s Plan”
• New e-store
• New Ward Calendar (with Google Calendar integration) and Ward Directory
• My Notebook (this is amazing and will sync with your mobile device in about a month or so). To try it out, login and go to scriptures or general conference. When you mouse-over a paragraph, you can tag and mark stuff and type in your own notes.
• And so on, and so on…

The team was up all night against harrowing opposition and went live at 5:00am or so. Conference, magazines and manuals go back to 2002 or so, but we’ll be loading more content each day, eventually reaching back to the 1970’s. We will have Spanish and German versions available before October conference.

We’re finding and fixing bugs so please give us feedback.

Enjoy! (And spread the word…)

He wrote:

On the other hand there are people who claim to have read my books twice, but who still think I hold that time is a background in which objects move around. I don’t even know what to say to that, having slept on it. Prince of Networks is pretty clearly written, I think.

The section on time is just over a six page section starting on page 214. You can read this section at Google Books. Graham’s take of space and time arises out of his interpretation of Heidegger’s fourfold. There are two sets of oppositions in strife. One is real vs. sensual objects while the other dimension is real objects and their qualities. Space and time are “by products of a tension between objects and qualities.” (219)

Now all that said, I have to admit I’ve read this section numerous times and I must just be missing the obvious. My impression is that Graham took ubrage to that. Allow me a defense to my comments though. In last week’s post I wrote,

That is I don’t think there is a heavy engagement with the issue of time. It’s just taken as a clear and uncomplex background in which objects reside. [...]

First regarding what for lack of a better term I’ll call “simple background time.” It’s actually not at all an unreasonable position to take. While the simple notion goes back at least to the Stoics, I personally find time much more troubling. Maybe that’s just because I’m partial to Einstein over the traditional background interpretations of quantum mechanics. Leibniz and Mach just got to me and I’ve long thought spacetime emerges out of object relations rather than being some absolute non-object background. I just think time is related to objects more integrally.

Note though that I am not calling it a substance. Indeed I was careful by bringing up the Stoics rather than Newton. Newton has a substantial space time in which events transpire. The Stoics instead had something halfway between substantial space ala Newton and relative space ala Leibniz. Tensions were also a big deal for the Stoic, albeit not quite in the same way Graham’s OOO has. Interestingly Milič Čapek in his The Concepts of Space and Time: Their Structure and Their Development sees Whitehead as the closest modern analogy to the Stoic view.

Graham described his own system by saying, “space is not the site of relation but of relation and non-relation.” (218) He then said, “Space is both nearness and distance. Things make contact along specific surfaces but are not exhausted by this contact, and recede partially into private depths.” (ibid, emphasis mine)

Of course now I’m wishing I’d never brought it up at all, but it seems pretty clear the Graham doesn’t think his system the same as Leibniz. The link in the post Graham objected to was to Lee Smolin arguing for a more more Leibnizean solution.

Levi appears to have read me the same way as Graham did when he says,

Clark rejects Graham’s account of time because, he says, he is sympathetic to Einstein. However, it is difficult for me to see how Graham’s account of time isn’t perfectly consistent with Einstein’s account of time. Einstein says exactly the same thing: that time and space are produces of objects and how they bend space-time as a result of their mass and velocity. [...] However, the point remains that OOO does not treat space and time as containers in which objects exist. Exactly the reverse.

But let me reiterate that to say there is a background is not to say space or time is a container.

Further I must point out that Einstein failed in achievign Leibniz’ and Mach’s vision of a relativized space time. Many philosophers have actually argued the debate itself is outmoded. (Which might have been a more interesting rejoinder for Levi and Graham to have taken) Certainly I never said Graham’s theory of space and time can’t be reconciled with the physics of General Relativity just as I suspect someone could show it compatible with the traditional sense of time within Quantum Mechanics.

It seems surprising both Levi and Graham took such umbrage to my passing comments. They were, I thought, at best vague and pointing to a promised future discussion.

The main statement I made was,

I’ve long thought spacetime emerges out of object relations rather than being some absolute non-object background. I just think time is related to objects more integrally.

I certainly regret now using the word “absolute.” Which probably was the cause of much problem. Although I meant it more in opposition to the Leibnizean view.

All that said though, I’ll fully confess to not really understanding his view of time and space. After rereading it several more times in light of Levi’s and Graham’s contents I think he is trying to say that we should view time in a near phenomenological sense from the “perspective” of the object looking at its own properties. But that doesn’t quite make sense either. But I think that’s what he’s after. In which case I was wrong. I’ve no problem admitting that. (Indeed it was figuring out OOP that was the point of posting on OOP rather than making an attack on OOP)

Since Levi thinks Graham’s view can be reconciled to relativity I’d love him to spell this out in a bit more detail. Because honestly right now I can’t make heads nor tails of it. Maybe someone else can chime in and help me out?

Related posts:

1. OOP
2. Best OOO Papers and Books?
3. OOP Discussion

Related posts:

1. Moral Intuitions and the Metaphysical Epoch
2. People Assign Blame to the Mentally Ill
3. Degrees of Responsibility

Related posts:

1. Beck and Social Justice
2. Stoics
3. The Paranoid Style and Science

On Sunday, an LDS bishop was shot and killed in Visalia, California. He was in his office after the three-hour block of meetings when a man asked to see him. He entered the bishop’s office and shot the bishop in the foot, then pulled him into the foyer and shot him in the face. The man was later fatally shot by police. (See Deseret News story.)

Bishop Clay Sannar and his wife have 6 boys, including a 6-month-old infant. This has been on my mind since I heard the news. But a man in Utah who had never met Bishop Sannar did something about it. He spent a few minutes and set up an online fundraiser to help support Bishop Sannar’s family (see tinyurl.com/sannar).

The power of social media and the goodwill of good people: within 24 hours, people had donated over $26,000. The total is now nearly $56,000.

Here are two news reports about how Connor Boyack responded by setting up the fundraiser: story 1, story 2.

Here’s a comment someone left on Connor’s Facebook page: “Connor, thanks so much for setting this up. In times like these, we all feel the need to do something to help in any way we can. You’ve provided a way for many of us to do that. Thanks so much. It has been inspiring and humbling to see so many good people rally together for this. It is a wonderful reminder that there are still so much kindness and compassion in the world.”

It’s my hope that we can use the technology that God has inspired to be created to do good things for others like this.

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With more than 11,000 Church members in the Ukraine and with more than 30,000 Latter-day Saints (or Mormons) in surrounding nations, the Kyiv temple will serve as a House of the Lord for Ukrainian Latter-day Saints to gather in worship and holy work for their families, binding them together forever.

Young people from 9 countries in Russia and in what was the Soviet Bloc, traveled many miles to participate in an evening of dance and celebration in traditional costumes, on the eve of the Kyiv temple dedication,

President Monson led Latter-day saints yesterday, August 29th, in 3 dedicatory services at what is the first temple to be dedicated in what was the Soviet Union–and key landmark in the Ukraine, the Kyiv Mormon temple.

“The magnificent Ukraine temple, Kyiv, … shines as a beacon of righteousness for all who would feel it’s light,” testified the Mormon prophet, spokesman of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mormon temples are symbolic of their faith in the afterlife as well as literal sanctuaries for the Savior and His ongoing instruction to those who are worthy to enter His house. In the words of one Mormon apostle–a modern-day witness of Jesus Christ:

Each temple stands as a symbol of our membership in the Church, as a sign of our faith in life after death, and as a stepping-stone to eternal glory for us and our family.

Temples differ from regular Mormon meetinghouses. They are edifices where additional service is performed by proxy, for ancestors who have passed beyond the veil without having been baptized or married by one in authority, and wherein they enter in an eternal and not just temporal union. All of our efforts in proclaiming the gospel, perfecting the Saints, and redeeming the dead lead to the holy temple.

President Hinckley declared:

These unique and wonderful buildings, and the ordinances administered therein, represent the ultimate in our worship. These ordinances become the most profound expressions of our theology.

Ordinances of the temple are absolutely crucial. We cannot return to God’s glory without them.

We invite all to learn more about the Savior’s Church in our day–which Mormons claim to be the very Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Looking for images to help illustrate stories about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Follow the link above to find images that may be used by bloggers, news media, or anyone needing images that describe the Church.

Other images can be found at images.lds.org, although there are some restrictions on use of some of those images.

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