Whenever we’re here, there are certain things that we simply must do. They’re tradition. We’ve already knocked a few of them off: A couple of days ago, for instance, we had brunch with friends at The Beachcomber at Crystal Cove. And, yesterday, with a friend, we went out on a whale-watching cruise from Dana Point. We didn’t actually see any whales, this particular time. But we saw California sea lions, and a Mola mola or ocean sunfish (very odd looking), and we enjoyed three enormous pods of common dolphins. (It was a bad day, I suspect, for sardines off the coast of Dana Point and San Clemente.)
I frankly don’t care much, one way or the other, whether we see whales. Frankly, I just enjoy being out at sea.
Today, my wife and I went to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where we spent several hours in the beautifully-done exhibit “King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh.” I recommend it to anybody who may be in the area. (We also enjoyed some relics from the United States space program, including used Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space capsules.) Afterwards, we took one of our nieces out to dinner. She’s here in southern California for a summer internship in computer science.
One small but amusing item: In the past, at least, some critics of the Book of Mormon have laughed at the absurdity of its several references to the use of “cimeters” in the wars between the Lamanites and the Nephites. Cimeter is obviously a variant spelling of word scimitar, which was, in turn, derived from the Persian word shamshēr and which refers to a curved sword. These critics have argued that the Book of Mormon’s “cimeters” are plainly anachronistic and, therefore, demonstrate yet again the book’s fraudulence. Scimitars, they say, were characteristic weapons of medieval Muslim armies.
Well, there on the wall was a small curved sword that was found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, who reigned from approximately 1332 BC until 1323 BC. The notation next to it identified it as a “scimitar.”
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I was happy to see this:
And this wonderful story delighted me very much:
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This is a valuable contribution, in my judgment, to discussions about the rise of the religious “nones” in the United States and the increase in disaffection from churches and synagogues:
“Why millennials are really leaving religion (it’s not just politics, folks)”
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And now I’m settling down to watch, once again, the greatest film ever made — Ground Hog Day.
Posted from Newport Beach, California
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