Major discovery made in LDS Church's First Presidency Vault

In a Church News article dated May 22, 2009, Robert Woodford of the LDS Church History Department Joseph Smith Papers Project spoke to a plenary session of the Mormon History Association meeting in Springfield, Ill. and announced that among historical documents in possession of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) included the original manuscript of the Book of Commandments and Revelations (BCR). He said it proved to be "the manuscript collection of revelations that Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer took to Missouri in November 1831, from which to publish the Book of Commandments," forerunner to the Doctrine and Covenants."

Quoting from the article, "Additional revelations were entered into the volume as they were received, and the BCR was also used as one of the sources for the revelations printed in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants," Brother Woodford noted. "Hence, the BCR contains the earliest surviving manuscript versions of many of Joseph Smith's revelations, and the only pre-publication manuscript copies of some of them."

The manuscript is reported to contain seven revelations given to Joseph Smith which were never published as part of the scriptural canon of the Church.

It was further noted that some of the pages of the manuscript were missing, but that a portion of the missing pages was in the possession of the Community of Christ (formerly the RLDS Church).

Grant Underwood, commented that "the manuscript "allows us to see that the bulk of all wording in the revelation texts remained unchanged from initial dictation to publication in the Doctrine and Covenants. Thus, while my presentation focuses on the revisions, perhaps the real story is that only a small part of most revelation texts were ever revised."

Waze -- the future of GPS

A significant portion of the GPS market is aimed at day-to-day driving. An Israeli start-up company, Waze, is collecting real-time traffic and driving conditions data from its users. This appears to be the most useful of all of the traffic and mapping systems yet devised.

The service is presently only available in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago and Boston in the U.S. The Waze system is currently running on 80,000 smart phones in Israel. Quoting a news article on Cnet, "The service allows users to report accidents, speed traps, cops by the side of the road, and other traffic-related items. What's cool is that these items fade automatically over time, and there's also the possibility for the system to ping a driver as he or she passes a previously reported incident to see if it's still there."

CEO Noam Bardin is quoted as saying, "that in Israel, Waze doesn't even use commonly available street maps as its base layer of data. Instead, it tracks users (with their permission), and builds maps from those traces. Then it asks users to name the roads." Cnet.

I have had GPS on my iPhone for about a year now and we have used it extensively, not only to locate addresses and get directions, but to locate restaurants, stores and other businesses. It is also useful for planning freeway exits and deciding on routes. Recently while driving in northern Arizona near Kingman, we needed to stop for dinner, using an App on the iPhone we found a Subway restaurant right on the freeway at the next exit. Historically, we would have just followed signs or driven off the freeway and looked for possibilities. We have spent quite a bit of time wandering around shopping centers trying to locate a suitable restaurant or other business. The mapping functions, plus the business locating functions, plus the real-time GPS location function add up to a really helpful tool.

Adding the functions described in the news article would significantly increase the utility of an already useful GPS function.

Google's Android competition to iPhone?

As an iPhone user I am always interested to see what might end up being competition. Cnet ran an interview with Google's director of mobile platforms about the future of Google's Android. I circulate in a group of people that are always actively searching for newer and faster technology, especially if the innovations can increase productivity and make working easier. I wouldn't characterize myself as being on the cutting edge, for example, I did not wait in line to buy an iPhone, but I am interested to see if there is something better out there.

Google's Android, software for mobile devices, was introduced on November 5, 2007. At the time, the news announcements indicated that "Google hopes to do to the mobile market what it has helped do for the traditional Internet, which is bring people closer to content on the Web in a easy and organized way. At the most basic level this means making Web surfing on a cell phone look and feel a lot like it does on a PC at home."

Since I am a fan of Apple products, an announcement that Google wanted to make my mobile device into a Windows PC didn't thrill me too much. Having used PDA's and Smartphones for years, I have definite opinions about the devices and their software. I can say that the iPhone was an appreciable advancement in the usefulness of the technology. But like all hardware, the iPhone has its quirks and limitations. Some things about the iPhone almost drive me crazy, but not crazy enough to go back to a standard non-iPhone machine.

What makes the iPhone stand out, in large part, are the Apps. It would be really hard to go back to a phone without the added features and functionality. New Android products are being introduced regularly, but without the support of a huge App base, the product does not yet have a great appeal to an iPhone user.

This is a development that will bear watching, I have friends with Android products and I will be looking to them for feedback.

Legos go architectural -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Lego Architecture

(Credit: Lego)

If I were Frank Lloyd Wright, (which fortunately I am not, because I would be dead) I don't know if I would be honored or insulted by the latest development in children's toys. Lego has introduced a line of architectural construction sets and has begun with a Lego Guggenheim and Falling Water House. The release comes in conjunction with fiftieth anniversary of the realization of Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned design, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and celebrates the golden anniversary of its landmark building with the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. On view from May 15 through August 23, 2009.

If you are too old to know about Legos and you have no children or grandchildren, you may not be aware that Legos can be made into almost anything you can imagine. One of the problems is the Lego doesn't leave much to the imagination. They sell pre-designed set of blocks that go together to make whatever, from Star Wars figures to buildings to video games featuring Lego's figures. Legos are featured as educational toys and they certainly are. At least they give the parents and grand-parents an education in how much they can cost.

I would probably have loved Legos when I was younger. But now my ardor for the toys is tempered by visions of thousands of little blocks all over the floor in disarray.

Science Fiction -- more fiction than science

I have been rereading some of the older science fiction stories. It is always interesting to see how the authors got a little bit right and a lot wrong. Almost uniformly SF writers overestimate both the pace and extent to which technology will change in the future. Orville's 1984 is a prime example. George Orwell's so-called vision of the future was very, very far off the mark. But even such luminaries such as Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov missed the spaceship on most of their predictions of the future; think 2001 A Space Odyssey and the sequel, 2010. Well, here we are folks, and I still can't book passage to the Space Station. I think I mentioned before that no one seems to have predicted computers especially not the iPhone type.

We still have to wait a while for talking computers and robots that do more than sweep floors and set off bombs. What is even more striking is the conservative nature of real society as opposed to its portrayal in SF novels and films. People have not changed a lot in the last 100 years, at least not in terms of the way we were supposed to be living according to SF. For example, Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky paints a picture of people living next to the Grand Canyon in underground homes. Yeah, sure.

Reading a lot of old SF points out how really hard it is to second guess the future. It is remarkable how many stories continued the Cold War into the 21st Century and beyond and how many had a Third World War or even more. I have noticed that a major portion of the SF writers are truly pessimistic. Back to Tunnel in the Sky, when it turns out that the world is so heavily over populated that they are sending millions of people to the stars by way of Heinlein's Star Gates.

It is also notable how little place religion is given in the future worlds of SF. If religion is mentioned at all, it is usually portrayed as negative and evil rather than beneficial to anyone. Perhaps the writers believe people will be saved by technology. It is also interesting how both SF and Fantasy seem to have the "average person" as the main character, who just manages to save the World or the Universe. He or she is always being hunted or attacked by the evil ______ fill in the blank (government, underworld, monsters, religious leader etc.) and always seems to just survive due to superior cunning, luck or the fact that the person was really a superhero but didn't know it.

SF writers especially, do not tell stories about ordinary people in ordinary families. If there is a family, the family is usually non-traditional and none of them have more than two or at most, three children. I have seven children and I already know all about the prejudice of the world on this point. Often the family is missing, the hero is an orphan or his parents are killed or whatever. SF writers do not like to deal with families, they are too traditional.

Technology itself is almost always personified. There is always an evil machine gone amok or robots that want to take over the world from humans or some other evil purpose. Aliens are usually evil or have some ulterior purpose when they aren't overtly trying to kill off the human race. If there were alien civilizations, and if they knew about earth, why would we think that they were automatically antagonistic or even uncaring about humans? Why are most aliens pretty bad?

Probably continued.

Happy 30th Anniversary to the first commercial video game

As usual, Google give us insights into things we never knew we needed insights into. The first commercial video game was called Galaxy Game and was located in the Stanford Student Union. Here is the Wikipedia explanation of the game:

The Galaxy Game is the earliest known coin-operated computer or video game. It was installed at the Tresidder Union at Stanford University in September, 1971, two months before the release of Computer Space, the first mass-produced such game.^[1] Only one unit was built initially, although the game later included several consoles allowing users to play against each other.

The game was programmed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck. Like Computer Space, it was a version of the existing Spacewar!, which had been created in the early 1960s on the PDP-1 and ported to a variety of platforms since then. The coin-operated game console incorporated a Digital PDP-11/20 with vector displays. The hardware cost around $20,000, and a game cost 10 cents or three games for 25 cents. In June 1972 the hardware was improved to allow the processor to power four to eight consoles. The game remained popular on campus, with wait times for players as much as one hour, until it was removed in May 1979 due to damaged screens.

The unit was restored in 1997 and now resides in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

I never was a fan of computer games, but I do appreciate the advances in graphics and processors engendered by the quest to have more and more realistic games.

Top ten books searched on WorldCat

WorldCat is the most extensive catalog of libraries in the world. It catalogs over 1 billion items in over 10,000 libraries. Each month they publish a list of the top twenty search items in the whole world. Here is the list of the top ten this month.

You may note that Stephenie Meyer has three of the top ten books! Maybe I should try again to read one? Nope, answered that question real fast. Obviously, I do not support or endorse any or all of the items listed. Neither would I look at or read some of the items.