Congrats to Kurt

Often, like most sports fans I have a favourite player on my team.  Often that player changes when that player retires or, more often, leaves the team.  Once they are gone they are usually “dead to me”.    I might occasionally see where they are on certain teams.  I more than likely root against them than for them.

Polygamy letters to the editor

With the British Columbia (BC) decision to charge two men from Bountiful BC with polygamy under the Criminal code of Canada there has been an interesting batch of letters to the editor making the rounds.  I will try and post some of the for and against here:

Why do we think Nephites use swords?

I know this is not new, but here is my reason for bringing this up.  I was looking at the latest version of the kid reader Book of Mormon.  In it the Lamanites generally depicted as using a club embedded with obsidian.  Meanwhile, the Nephites are portrayed as swinging objects not unfamiliar to mideval knights.

One Iota of difference

A phrase I had not really thought about much.  Like so many other phrases in English they usually revolve around something, whether historical or utilitarian in everyday life. For example, the phrase, back to square one refers to an old BBC radio convention for covering soccer games.  In the paper they would print a card showing the soccer field with each part of the field sectioned in blocks with numbers.

Square one meant you were in your own half with the ball.

So with that in mind lets talk about Iota.

Iota is, according to wikipedia and other sources it was the 9th letter of the Greek alphabet.  However, what is significant with this letter is how Christianity changed because of it.

The addition of Iota to the word homoousios makes homoiousios.  So what does that mean, and how does that change a religious movement.  In 316 AD at Nicae in Turkey the battle of the Bishops of the early church revolved around understanding the nature of Christ.

For Aryans Christ was of the same substance, homoousios, but rather of a similar substance of God, homoiousios.   For the “Orthodox” bishops, such as Nicholas (modern Santa Claus), homoousios was the only way to understand the trinity.  The idea of the father, and the son being anything other than of one substance was tandemount to heresy.

So the Christian world, with its creeds, spun in the next few years of the 4th century on one letter, iota.  So in English this phrase points to how even one letter can cause wars, exterminations, and persecution.  Thus, if you have not one iota of difference it means you have a meaningless separation or distinction, your positions are the same.

the fiasco that is the Bowl Championship Series

Other than USC can anyone honestly say there is a better team right now then Utah?  I suspect if we had a playoff series Utah and USC would be playing in the final.  They destroyed Alabama, end of story.

I think there are many people who follow the Mountain West Conference who right now figure their champion should be on the top.  I cannot blame them.  USC, who lost to Oregon State have been a dominate team lately and certainly after their Rose Bowl demolition of Penn State could argue they should be in the National Championship game.