Interesting Discussion

So I talked to a girl at school today about religion (this is becoming a pattern). She was telling me how she thinks God is completely void of emotion of feeling. She said she relates him to nature, which is completely beautiful and lovely at times and then horrible and destructive later. She said, overall she doesn't know if a God exists, but she said if she did have an opinion of God that would be what she envisions.

I have a much different idea about God. I think she bases her belief on God by the fact that horrible things happen to people who in no way deserve these things. She was telling me about how she had bone cancer and how unjust it was. I have a very different view of God than she does.

I find God to be completely loving and absolutely caring about us. I think that earth is, by its nature, both beautiful and destructive and all the other things that she sees. But I think acts, by themselves, are rather meaningless in life, the only things that have lasting meaning is our reaction to events.

I believe God to be incredibly loving, and although he does see us down here struggling and having an incredibly difficult time, he weeps with us. He desires to help us but maintains our personal autonomy and respects our freedom to choose. So the violence and depravity that occur on earth are rather insignificant, it is our reaction that God cares about. I think he will cure all of the damage that has been done to us that was not a result of our actions. He will buoy up those who have been brought low. But he is incredibly loving, and this is something I know.

iTunes 8's "Genius" Playlist Creator is the Best Thing to Happen to iTunes in a Long Time

I love this new feature.

If you have a song selected in your iTunes library you simply push the "Genius" button on the bottom right and iTunes will automatically create a playlist for you based on user's listening habits related to that song. So iTunes collects data on usage for creating playlists and if people usually have said selected song iTunes will group it with other songs that users frequently have also. It will also look, I believe, to see what songs usually accompany this song in people's playlists.

This is great for lazy people like me. I used to just pick a different song every couple of songs. It was the way I liked it, because I could listen to what I felt like listening to, but it took a lot of time and thought for me to decide upon a song. But this new feature is so easy I have used it literally every time I have listened to music since I downloaded it. The reason I have stuck with it so religiously is that it is "Genius." I skip through, at most, two songs each time I listen to a playlist of 25 songs. It is incredibly good at knowing what I will want to listen to by selecting one song. It makes my music listening experiences much more effecient (less time going and finding songs I want to listen to) and enjoyable.

Also, there is a "Recommendation" sidebar that offers you recommendations on songs you do not have that people who listen to that song usually do. I love this also, it has made me purchase more (smart marketing tactic) and discover songs I had forgotten about. I have often seen the song in the sidebar and thought "Holy crap, I used to listen to that song with this song all the time in 7th grade!" Or something to that effect.

The more people use this feature the better it will be. Also, the more songs you have in your library, the better the "Genius" feature will do in matching up songs you want to listen to. I have about 2400 songs and it does great with this many. The more obscure artists it struggles with, for instance, Joshua James, but overall it is great. Joshua James songs only bring up other songs by him and my music by Damien Rice and Nick Drake. The three of them are great artists, but more variety would be nice.

If you have not downloaded the recent iTunes 8 update I highly recommend it. It has made me rediscover my music in a new way. For those of you who do not have iTunes and use WMP or another program, well . . . we have bigger issues to work out.

Retributivism or Utilitarianism

So, in our criminal law class we have been talking about two different approaches to the punishment of criminals. These two approaches are retributivism and utilitarianism. I will give a definition of each, taken from lexisnexis.com, which is a legal research website.

Utilitarians consider the effect of a form of punishment in terms of both general deterrence and specific (or individual) deterrence. When the goal is general deterrence, punishment is imposed in order to dissuade the community at large to forego criminal conduct in the future. When the goal is specific deterrence, punishment is meant to deter future misconduct by an individual defendant by both preventing him from committing crimes against society during the period of his incarceration (incapacitation), and reinforcing to him the consequences of future crimes (intimidation).

That is the definition for Utilitarians in the law. I would like to add that by my reading in our text book, utilitarians don't punish unless there is utility for the punishment. The punishment must have a purpose, or use.

Retributivism – Under a retributive theory of penal law, a convicted defendant is punished simply because he deserves it. There is no exterior motive such as deterring others from crime or protecting society – here the goal is to make the defendant suffer in order to pay for his crime. Retributive theory assigns punishment on a proportional basis so that crimes that cause greater harm or are committed with a higher degree of culpability (e.g, intentional versus negligent) receive more severe punishment than lesser criminal activity.

That is the definition for Retributivism in the law. I would like to add that by my reading in our text book, retributists don't punish to reform, to deter, or to incapacitate, they simply punish because someone has done something wrong. They don't care about utility in punishment.

So my question is . . . which do you think God subscribes to? Or, in what way does God view punishment? I would guide your thoughts to ask this question, is there always utility when God punishes, does he ever punish just because somebody did something wrong?

I imagine that both points will be strongly argued. I hope that this is the case. I will add my viewpoint along the way. I have had this conversation with a couple of people and I think a lot of this discussion has to do with what you view punishment to be, so in a way it turns into semantics. That is fine with me, as long as we decide upon meanings for words. I may add more to the post when people start raising different questions/concerns.

I hope all who read my blog will post, even those who don't post very often . . . Becky, Sam, Cindy, Dan . . . anyone else. I think this questions shows us a lot about what we think about God and his laws. I would love to hear everyone's viewpoint.

Directions of Blog

I have been think a lot about my blog lately. There are three things that I really like to write about:

1. Theology (mainly stuff about my religion, because clearly that is what interests me)
2. Sports
3.  Stuff - I absolutely love  and especially my iPhone

I may start a blog on each one, but as you can tell, I am having a difficult time finding time to keep up on just this one. I was listening to a talk the other day by Elder Ballard about how we should be defending the faith more online. I was thinking I should try to do this also.

And I love to talk sports. I think about sports a lot also. I haven't decided what I am going to do yet.

If a group of people wanted to start a religious blog with me I would be completely up for that. We could have a group Mormon blog. I would love that. I would really like to get one that could also have a chat room, but I haven't become tech savvy yet to create one. Suggestions are welcome.

BYU Cougars Beat Washington Huskies 28-27

I have been reading a lot of online posts about Jake Locker's penalty because he threw the football in the air after the touchdown to presumably tie the game. The Washington Huskies were assessed a fifteen yard penalty on the extra point attempt.

I can absolutely understand why Huskies fans are upset. That play should have not got the flag as it did in an ideal world. It would be nice if the NCAA would let people play the game and not worry about if someone spikes a ball because they are happy they scored. This doesn't really augment the game too much. Yes, the NFL's players can take the celebrations too far. But this was a far cry from using the pylon to putt the football, or taking out a cell phone and calling someone. This was very tame.

But I also think some things must be said:

1. I can understand if your team returns a football the length of the field on the last play and someone gets called for an illegal block that never happened. If that play would have won you the game it would have cost you the game. It is hard to deny that. But give me a break-anyone who thinks this cost them the game must have turned the TV off right there and thought they didn't get a PAT kick. If he hits that routine chip shot they tie the game. There would be almost no discussion of this right now if he just would have hit the shot. Even more, if he would have been short that may have been a reason to say the penalty was too costly, but the kick was not short, IT GOT BLOCKED. BYU blocked the kick. I have heard about arguments about trajectory but give me a break, what percentage of kicks from that far away are blocked, 1%? If that.

2. Furthermore, BYU had the same penalty assessed right after the play. It just wasn't as costly for them. If something bad would have happened to BYU because of this play would we have reason to complain. Jake Locker broke the rules just as much as BYU did, we just didn't have it matter as much because of circumstances. The refs were calling it fair.

3. Let's say Jake Locker throws that football down instead of straight up in the air. That would have been a HUGE spike. There would be no discussion. So should the rule be that you only are penalized if you throw the ball in any direction but down? Of course not. If you use the football as part of your celebration you are penalized. Jake Locker threw the football high in the air, and he used the ball to celebrate. That is clearly illegal. If spiking the ball is illegal, clearly that is also. Did that hurt the Washington Huskies, of course it did. I think it hurt them more mentally than anything else. But again, BYU Cougars had the same penalty right after and fortunately it didn't happen to hurt them as much as it did the Washington Huskies.

If BYU had lost the game because of this I would be upset. But I would be much more upset about that blocked PAT than I would have been about the penalty. I would have wondered why our guys could not block enough on the most crucial play of the game. Should the rule be amended, I don't know. If you say they can throw the ball in the air how can you make it so they can't spike it? Direction isn't that important. The NCAA rule has to either be that you can't use the ball to celebrate at all, or you can, it can't be both ways.

On a side note, Jake Locker is an incredible runner. He missed some extremely wide open guys during the course of the game, but he can always get you a first down. The problem is that with Jake Locker you can't really rely on his arm, because it is inaccurate. If you just have him run all the time than people won't respect your team. They definitely won't respect your throw and they will focus all their attention on your runners. Jake Locker seems to suffer from the same ailments as Michael Vick and Vince Young--extremely one dimensional.