Wow.  It really is a rough neighborhood:   http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-soldiers-beheaded-cooked-anti-islamic-state-machete-wielding-woman-jihadi-hunter-2424220   Thanks (I suppose!) to Cody Quirk for calling this item to my attention.   Posted from Mentor, Ohio     Read more

    James A. Garfield is largely forgotten today because he was shot only one hundred days into his presidency and died roughly a hundred days later.  If the statements that survive him are any indication, though, he might have been a very good president:   The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.    If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best... Read more

    An interesting discussion from Ryan Larsen:   http://mormonpuzzlepieces.blogspot.com/2016/09/regarding-alleged-handwriting-of-abraham.html   I’ve been thinking of the Book of Abraham papyri a bit today because of their connection to Ohio, and specifically because we drove through Parkman, Ohio, this afternoon — the town where Michael Chandler, who sold the papyri to Joseph Smith, farmed until his death in 1866.  He’s buried there, in the West Farmington Cemetery.   Unfortunately, we were in a bit of a hurry today, and, anyhow, the sky was... Read more

    Lately, whole scientific fields like psychology and medicine have been rocked by the realization that fraud, sloppiness, bias, and other error-inducing factors are rampant in them to a previously unimaginable degree.   Is archaeology in the same boat?   A doctoral student in the subject at University College London suggests that it just might be:   http://www.joeroe.eu/blog/2016/08/27/does-archaeology-have-a-reproducibility-crisis/   Posted from Mentor, Ohio     Read more

    A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune was entitled “LDS leaders preach about religious freedom, but Utah Mormons don’t see it as biggest concern, poll shows.”   Reading that, one ardent anti-Mormon who posts up a daily storm flogging Mormonism and the Saints, claims that this proves that the apostles are “utterly disconnected” from the general Church membership.   Because, I guess, being completely in sync with those to whom they’re preaching is the sign of genuine prophets?... Read more

    Could there be a second object in our solar system (besides our own Earth) that hosts life?  The odds may have gotten just a bit better:   http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/26/health/jupiter-europa-water-plumes/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool   Posted from Mentor, Ohio     Read more

    My Thursday Deseret News column for this week has now appeared:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865663549/Hyrum-Smith-is-an-impressive-witness.html   Posted from Mentor, Ohio     Read more

    We’ve spent the past two days filming at the restored Historic Kirtland Village, mostly in and about the Newell K. Whitney store and at the Kirtland Temple itself.  For reasons that we captured on film, Karl Anderson argues that the room in the Whitney store called “the School of the Prophets” can be considered the first temple constructed in this dispensation.     Yesterday, we also filmed at the site on the Chagrin River where the first Kirtland... Read more

    A couple of days ago, I posted an item from Mentor, Ohio, about the work that I’m involved in this week in and around Kirtland, Ohio, and I entitled it “A Report from Geauga County.”   An alert reader wrote in to point out that I was wrong:  Kirtland (and Mentor) are in Lake County.   True.   But not what I had in mind.   Geauga County was formed from Trumbull County in 1806.  Thus, during the... Read more

    Brian Stubbs’s remarkable presentation at the August’s 2016 FairMormon conference is now up:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/changes-languages-nephi-now   If he’s right, it won’t prove the Book of Mormon true.  But it will go some distance in the right direction, and ti will require a massive reevaluation of what mainstream scholarship thinks it knows about Pre-Columbian America.   Posted from Mentor, Ohio     Read more