December 30, 2013 J. Max Wilson

Monday Morning Link Dump: Frozen Bubbles, Phenakistoscopes, Dog Breed Degeneration, and more…

During the course of a week, I often run across interesting links and think “I should share that!” but for one reason or another I never get around to it. Starting today, I will be posting a weekly link dump every Monday containing a selection of links that I have found during the previous week that for whatever reason didn’t get their own post. Enjoy! Continue reading →

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Category: link dump
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December 27, 2013 J. Max Wilson

Old is the New New – Returning to the Blog as the Central Platform for Content

For the new year, I have decided that I will consolidate my online posting and sharing back into my blog.

image of a typewriter

Photo by Kristin Nador

Back when I first started blogging in 2004, I posted everything to my blog. Read an interesting link…posted the link to my blog. Had a short thought or idea…posted it to my blog. Composed a poem…posted it to my blog. But during the last decade (hard to believe that it has really been that long!), I have increasingly differentiated the types of posts I make and I dispense them to different online venues as seems appropriate, especially in the last few years as social media has gained an increasing foothold on the Internet. Continue reading →

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Category: technology
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November 24, 2013 J. Max Wilson

My Thoughts are Not Your Tharts

The 11-year-old children I teach at church will not soon forget today’s Sunday School lesson. We accidentally coined a new word: Thart.

The lesson was on Faith and the early Mormon pioneers. We were talking about how God often has a different plan for you than you have planned for yourself, but that if you will trust Him, He will make you a better person than you could have made yourself and lead you to better things than you could have chosen for yourself.

Auguste_Rodin-The_Thinker-Legion_of_Honor-Lincoln_Park-San_Francisco

One of the children was trying to say that Heavenly Father knows better what is good for you than what you thought of. But instead of saying “thought” he accidentally said “thart”. Continue reading →

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Category: lds
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November 5, 2013 J. Max Wilson

A Critical Review of the Movie Adaptation of Ender’s Game

enders-game-promo-posterThose of you who follow me on social media sites like Facebook or Google+ know that I am a fan of Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game. It is one of my favorite books. I have been anticipating the movie adaptation for some time.

In preparation for the release of the movie on November 1st, I read the book out loud to my children. I have read the book more than 5 times, but this was the first time I read it out loud. Yes, the book is very violent and some of you will legitimately question my parental judgement for reading it to my children. I did soften some of the language as I read, but I didn’t skip over any of the violence. It was a great experience and the kids loved it.

(Reading a book out loud to someone else is a very different experience than reading silently to oneself in the same way that hearing it read is different than reading it; you notice things you might have missed otherwise. I highly recommend it.)

So when I went with my wife to see the movie on opening weekend, the book was very fresh in my mind, and more so because I had read it out loud.

Be warned that I am not a film or book reviewer.  This is not an organized review.  It’s just some of my personal, unorganized thoughts after having seen the film.

First some mostly positive observations: Continue reading →

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Category: Movies
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