A misspelled word

English is a funny language. In Armenian, there are no spelling bees, because if you can pronounce the word, you can spell it. Same with Arabic, Spanish and a myriad of other languages. This leads me to my thought for today, what does misspelling a word in English mean? Does it really mean that you don't have enough education to spell correctly or does it mean that English is an impossibly hard language so we should cut people some slack on spelling?

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to spell correctly and get 100% on every spelling test. In order to do that, I figured I needed to practice and so when I was speaking, I would spell in my mind every word I spoke out loud . Even today sometimes I subconsciously start spelling things I say. I would also pronounce the words in my mind the way that they were spelled (ex. beautiful I would say in my mind, "bee- aaa- ooo-tee-ful").

My question I've been asking myself is should a misspelled word preclude someone from having a certain job? I would understand if that person were applying for an editor position, but otherwise does spelling have any bearing on how well a person does a job that has nothing to do with spelling?

A man of science and religion

Ok, so I decided to go and make my own blog. I am ceding the Matt and Brit Gardner Family blog to Brit with an occasional entry from me focused on family stuff. I don't think my family blog is the place to post political debate topics, sports entries and the like, so I decided to branch out and make my own.

When Google comes out with its wave technology, I will try to implement that and create real discussion, but for now I will settle with the blog form as given.

So, to kick it off, I would like to propose a thought. When I was taking a physics class in astronomy at BYU-Idaho, my professor proposed that the chasm between evolution and religion is much like the chasm that existed many years previous between astronomy and religion, where the Catholic church persecuted and imprisoned those who thought that (based on evidence) the Earth indeed revolved around the Sun. Given time and understanding, we understand now that religion and science were not at odds with eachother, but that the interpretation of religion was at odds with science.

So, what do you think about evolution? What are some ways you have come to reconcile the two?

I found this interesting article in the new era a few years ago at lds.org.