The 2016 United States tax year is coming to a close, and many Americans are thinking about charitable gifts, as well as about Christmas.   There are hundreds, if not thousands, of worthwhile charities that do a host of good things.  They nourish children, fight diseases, support museums, furnish scholarships, underwrite schools and colleges, sponsor missionaries, fund research, combat human trafficking, sustain symphony orchestras, provide medical care, dig freshwater wells, and many other things that I can’t even begin... Read more

    You might find this retrospective interesting.  There’ll be stories that you had forgotten, and, very possibly, stories that you hadn’t heard about in the first place:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/2016     Read more

    Most of you have probably already heard about this — I’m a bit late reporting on it — but it’s a fascinating discovery:   http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/   So much, it seems, for the dinosaur images and dinosaur figures that I grew up with.  (I didn’t, contrary to popular fable, grow up with actual dinosaurs.  The last one had died of old age several years before I was born.)     Read more

    Someone called my attention to this article, on what seems to be an alt-right and/or Trumpist website:   This Is The First Country In The World That Bans Islam And Demolishes All Mosques [Video]   I haven’t verified the story itself, but I’m struck by how the article holds its depiction of Angola up as something to be emulated.   Just for some context, here are some other details about Angola:   The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Index of Economic... Read more

    “‘Almost everything is already discovered’, a young Max Planck was told in 1874.  Planck, who would become one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, had travelled to Munich to embark on a career in physics, only to be told by Professor Philipp von Jolly to study something else, as ‘theoretical physics was approaching a degree of completion which geometry had possessed for hundreds of years.'”   Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe:... Read more

    By Saturday Night Live:   http://www.ldsliving.com/SNL-Hilariously-Shows-What-Trump-Romney-s-Meetings-Must-Have-Looked-Like/s/83984?utm_source=ldsliving&utm_medium=email     Read more

    http://www.ldsliving.com/Mitt-Romney-Posts-about-Ordaining-His-Grandson-to-Priesthood-Sparks-Unique-Missionary-Opportunity/s/83971?utm_source=ldsliving&utm_medium=email   Many anti-Mormons and apostates and alienated members use social media to pound on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I don’t think, though, that we’ve begun to harness the power of the internet to share, preach, and commend the Restored Gospel.   Good on Mitt Romney (and on others) for being open about their values and beliefs online.     Read more

    A story from about a year ago.  In Israel (as elsewhere), many archaeological discoveries aren’t made by archaeologists but by construction workers and developers.  This is such a case:   http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.695784   Nahariya is a coastal town, on the Mediterranean, in the far north of Israel.     Read more

    So much for the mystique of CSI:   http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2016/12/08/we_cant_trust_forensic_science_110121.html   I remember, years ago, talking with a friend — a Ph.D. in biochemistry — who runs a major federal laboratory near Washington DC dedicated to forensic DNA studies and who has literally “written the book” on the subject.  He was amused by the panoply of apparent Nobel Prize nominees who populate those CSI series, and by the lavishness of the labs in which they work.     Read more

    From time to time, I read mocking comments about the “Early Modern English” hypothesis regarding the language of the Book of Mormon that’s associated with Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack.  Much merriment ensues, as the critics vie with one another in denigrating the idea as crazy, desperate, stupid, and so forth.   Typically, those making the derisive remarks also make comments strongly suggesting that they don’t really have the slightest clue what the proposal is about.  In fact, I... Read more