Quotes I Like

October 21, 2010
"In societies where the citizens are taught from a young age to feel accountable to God for honesty and integrity, they will abide by rules and practices that, while unenforceable, promote democratic ideals. In societies where this is not true, there cannot be enough policemen to enforce honest behavior."

Elder Quentin L. Cook

Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

From General Conference – October, 2010

Movie List

10/9/2010
Babies

We went to visit Erica. She had this movie rented. I would NEVER have rented this. It was charming and adorable.
It is a documentary in which one man filmed incidents from four babies lives – birth to one year old. He then took two years to edit together the movie. There is no narration. There is no dialog. The babies are not acting. It is just real babies. And they are not your normal babies from middle class. No siree. Of course you also get a sense of some parenting, but the story is really the milestones of the babies first year.
I liked it. Mar liked it. Don't expect any "action" so if you are a real man's man – pas it up. No explosions. No chases. But it is a good dose of reality movie.

Travels with Lar

Sept. 27 - Oct. 1, 2010
Livermore, CA

This was a business trip to teach a class.  The class was enjoyable and went well.

Livermore, is in the next valley East from the San Fransico Bay area.  It has two large government labs - Lawrence Livermore and Sandia Livermore (where I was teaching).  It is the last of the major cities going east - next comes the Central Valley.  It is an area that has vineyards.  Other than the vineyards and the labs - well those are Livermore's claim to fame.

One night I did travel in to the Oakland Temple, which turned out to be only a half hour drive.  There is such a beautiful view of the bay area from the temple in Oakland.  I did proxy work for a person from Japan - from 1320.  That is a record old date for me.

Thursday evening I drove back to San Jose for the night so that I could catch a 6:20 flight home.

It was a totally uneventful trip - just the way I like it.

Reading List

October 1, 2010
I Am Legend by Robert Matheson

Stephen King said that Robert Matheson was the author who was the greatest influence on him. I think that Stephen King, although very productive – and very occult and strange – just doesn't have the quality of Robert Matheson. I thought this was a very well written book.

I haven't seen the recent movie, so I did not have preconceived notions on the book, however I did know sort of what the book was about. I was impressed and pleased with the way he wrote and unfolded the story. It was psychologically scary, and, not knowing what the ending was provided a tension, especially when he met the young woman.

This book also contained some of Matheson's short stories. Again, they were really fun to read – well, most of them were. One or two were just disturbing.

 So my recommendation is to forget the movie if you have seen it, then read this book and enjoy.