Slime molds!

So the other day I found a website with really cool pictures of slime molds. Slime molds are amoebas that are similar to fungi, and they look really cool. I've included a couple of the pictures that I liked best from the site, but I highly recommend that you go to the site and look at the rest for yourself (as there are about 40 pictures there).

These sorts of things are why I love microbiology. Nature is just plain awesome.

(Edit: Apparently when you link to online pictures, it's hard to control the size--therefore some of these photos don't actually fit on my blog. Just another reason to go see the site. Seriously, check it out.)






Yeah, those last two are a picture of the same thing at different times. Cool, eh?

(Edit: I figured out how to change the image size, so I did. Now you can see the whole thing. Hooray!)

6th challenge from Maren

So my sis-in-law put me up for a challenge, and here's how it works:
In your pictures folder on your comp, go to the 6th folder of pictures, then the 6th picture in the folder and post that picture on your blog. I probably would have been content just to see which picture it was, but then I felt bad for not living up to the tag. So here it is for you all to see.



This comes from Christmas beard 2007, and is a picture of me and the wifey right before I shaved it off. It only grew for one week compared to last year's 2-weeker, so it almost looks thin. I figure that for Christmas beard 2009, I'll let it grow until it's shoulder-length. Mmm, boy. Just trying to Follow the Prophet. (Lorenzo Snow or Joseph F. Smith, to be precise.)

This would be the point in the post where I would tag six other people, but I'm not really that into that part of it. So go for it if you like, but I won't put you under any imaginary obligation to continue this trend.

It's me... super-hero-ized.

I found this website today by happy chance. It's called Hero Factory, and you can make different superheroes. So I made myself into one. Notice the patch and the spork. Please feel free to visit the site, make one of yourself, and then post a link to it in the comments. (Edit: By "post a link to it," I guess I really mean that you should click "download" to get a copy of the image, then put it up on your blog, and then put a link to it in the comments.)

Faith

I study the sciences, and as a result I've run into a lot of different ideas about the world and the universe. There seems to be a growing shift to atheism (or at least agnosticism) in the world (and even one or two people that I know) which has led me to think more about faith, what it is, and why we need it. I ran across a post at Mormon Matters that articulated a lot of the same ideas I had been mulling over.

I think that faith is a decision. We choose to believe or to not believe. God has provided enough evidence (or sufficient lack of evidence, if you choose) on either side so that we can make our choice about what we want to believe. God will generally never give us incontrovertible, sensory evidence about his existence and science cannot definitively prove that God does not exist. Andrew at MM states that God wants this to be a difficult choice, and thus we must struggle and work to make our faith grow. He says, "by concealing himself and his doings, God had demonstrated he wants faith development to be a soul-searching, heart-wrenching, and mind-bending experience." Essentially, I think God wants to see how bad we want it.

Two particular scriptures come to mind that help provide me some reassurance in this process. One is in Ether 12:6--"ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." This implies that after our faith has been tried, we will receive further witness (=personal evidence). An example of this shows up in Alma 32, where the prophet is teaching a group of people about how to know if his words are true. He compares his words (and God's word) to a seed. That seed requires nourishment and care in order to grow. When we see the growth, we have further evidence that what we have worked on is worthy of our work.

I have chosen to believe. I don't have all the answers to all of the questions that might come up. Some of my questions have to be put on the shelf until I receive further light and knowledge. However, in my decision to believe I have found more and more evidence that there is indeed a Creator, and I grow stronger in my faith that we have a Savior who loves us and will help us be our best and return to live with God.