John Colton's blog

I found this talk very interesting. It was given by Elder Dallin Oaks to the Harvard Law School yesterday.
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/fundamental-premises-of-our-faith-talk-given-by-elder-dallin-h-oaks-at-harvard-law-school

Here are the first two paragraphs:

I welcome this opportunity to speak in what our hosts have called “Mormonism 101.” In his fine lecture last year Judge Thomas Griffith said he was giving “an introduction to the Mormon faith.” I intend to do the same, speaking from my special responsibility as an apostle called to speak as a witness of the gospel plan and mission and Church of Jesus Christ.

It is challenging to speak to such a diverse audience—some thoroughly familiar with the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ, some unaware, and many between those extremes. I will address this diversity by speaking about some of the fundamental premises of our faith and how they affect our interaction with the rest of mankind. My object is to illuminate several premises and ways of thinking that are at the root of some misunderstandings about our doctrine and practice.

The bulk of his talk is about these three areas:

I have chosen three clusters of truths to present as fundamental premises of the faith of Latter-day Saints:

1. The nature of God, including the role of the three members of the Godhead, and the corollary truth that there are moral absolutes.

2. The purpose of life.

3. The three-fold sources of truth about man and the universe: science, the scriptures, and continuing revelation, and how we can know them.

It's a lengthy talk, but well worth the read.

Emily won (tied) her class spelling bee a couple of weeks ago, so she was in the school-wide spelling bee today. They took the top two spellers from each class, plus a few extra for good measure. About forty kids in all.

Emily did very well in the bee, and ended up finishing tied for 3rd place. (There were three other kids who also tied for 3rd.)

Her most impressive word: aggrandizement

The word that took her out: cellulose (she hadn't heard that word before)

Not bad for a 4th grader competing against 5th and 6th graders! :-)

Like last year, there's is a collegiate acappella-ist in the American Idol finals, and like I rooted for Anoop Desai last year (among others), I've got to support John Park this year. Go John Park!

Anoop's rooting for him, too.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/idolchatter/post/2010/01/anoop-desai-rooting-for-john-park/1

Here's a video of his collegiate group singing "Coming Home", with John as the soloist.

(Same day as the final Yellowstone pictures.)

We drove out of Yellowstone towards the south, so we could go through Grand Teton National Park. We only stopped a couple of places, because (a) we needed to drive all the way back to Orem, and (b) it was kind of a cold and dreary day. But during the times we could see the Grand Tetons, they were impressive! This is at the northern end of the valley.The lake you can see in the distance is Jackson Lake, the major lake of the valley.
There is a prominent hill in the middle of the valley that one can drive a car up. Signal Mountain, it's called. This is the view looking east from the hilltop, a panorama sticked together from two photos. (Click on the picture to get a lot more detail.)
Emily, looking down on the valley.
Here are the Tetons as seen from that hill.
Leslie found two friends there; a caterpillar, and a boy who liked the caterpillar almost as much as she did.
Our final stop was at the shores of Jenny Lake, a small lake on the southern end of the valley. (Click on the picture to get a lot more detail. And if you want to it in full resolution, use this hyperlink.)



(P.S. I hope some people enjoyed some of the pictures! That's all for summer 2009!)

The day after our Grand Canyon of Yellowstone hike we drove home. And we finally saw some wildlife beyond rodents! A whole herd of bison crossed the road right in front of us.

Shortly after that, we saw a bear. He was far from the road, although I was able to zoom in and get a pretty good shot.

I think I only have two more sets of pictures left, after this one. Neither is as extensive as this, though. I did mentioned how I feel about waterfalls, right? Well, this was the day we hiked on a path along the Upper Falls and Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Probably the highlight of the trip, for me.

It was a glorious day!

We parked our car, then walked along a an interesting path towards the trail head. It was an unused road, followed by a used road, followed by a hiking path.

And here are the Upper Falls!

In honor of the waterfalls' glory, I made my first ever YouTube videos. Here you go! If you go to YouTube, I think you can even see it in HD. (I used the same pocket-sized Canon video camera that I used to make all of the demo videos for my Physics 105 class.)

Then the trail led down the river away from the Upper Waterfall. Here we are looking back on it.

...and then, the Lower Waterfall!


We hiked down the famous "Uncle Tom's Trail", something like 328 metal steps down the side of the canyon. It takes you close to the base of the Lower Falls.


Here's my second YouTube video!


We continued walking past the second waterfall, towards Artist Point.

Getting farther away...

What a handsome family!

Isn't he cute?

This was taken from Artist Point. You can see why the artists love it!

This one looks totally fake, doesn't it? But, on my honor, there's been no editing of the picture.
I think this is the view looking downstream from Artist Point. Still looks fake.
Another thing we saw that day, was Artist's Paint Pots. To get to the "paint pots", we had to walk through an area that looked just like a Christmas tree farm. They had had a fire, and replanted trees all at the same time, so the trees were all the same height.
Here's one of the paint pots.
Finally, I really don't know where this picture was taken, but it's a nice one of the girls.

The last couple of weeks I've been working on materials for my third year review. This review is essentially a warmup for the official tenure review (which they call the "continuing faculty status" review here at BYU), a couple of years from now. Basically, I have to justify my existence as a faculty member. It's been a big pain, with probably about 30 hours of total work put into it. But, I got it turned in this morning. (...and there was much rejoicing!)

Anyway, if anyone is interested, here are two of the documents from my review binder:
My current CV
My Personal Statement/Self Assessment Summary (accomplishments and goals)