A nice note from Stephen Smoot:   http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2015/10/why-were-plates-necessary.html     Read more

    A presidential aide entered the office and found Abraham Lincoln counting out dollar bills.   “What are you doing?” the aide asked in astonishment.   “A porter at the Treasury Department is laid up with smallpox,” Mr. Lincoln responded.  “He is owed back wages, so I am what you call ‘cutting through all the red tape’ to give him his due.”     Read more

    A nice essay from clear back in early July, by the peerless Greg Smith:   https://seesangelsinthearchitecture.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/to-judge-or-not-to-judge-not-much-of-a-question/     Read more

    Today’s installment of my weekly Deseret News column:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865639058/Oliver-Cowdery-in-Wisconsin.html   For the story behind the image of Oliver Cowdery, above, see here.         Read more

    A couple of days ago, someone sent to me, on Facebook, an item about an ISIS fighter who had allegedly been involved in child sex trafficking but who has recently been killed by the Russians in Syria.   Since, as a few readers of this blog may know, I have some slight interest in the Middle East, and since I assumed the item to be accurate — after all, ISIS does engage in child sex trafficking, on a mass... Read more

    Conservative analysis from one of my favorite authors, the Central California farmer and Stanford-Ph.D. classicist Victor Davis Hanson:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425423/obama-middle-east-blunders-putin-gains?target=author&tid=900280   Incidentally, there’s a report tonight that Cuban troops — Cuban troops — are now on the ground in Syria, along with their Russian counterparts.  After decades of isolation, the Castro brothers have burst back out into the world with a fireworks and a brass band.   That’s change you can believe in.     Read more

    You might find this very, very interesting.  I did, even though I already knew quite a bit of it:   http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/         Read more

    Some of you who missed this article from a couple of weeks ago might find it of interest:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865638165/Unique-LDS-temple-high-rise-apartment-project-excites-Mormons-others-in-Philadelphia.html?pg=all   When I was younger, I wanted to be an architect.  But I’m utterly and absolutely devoid of even the slightest visual talent.   I know.  That hasn’t stopped some architects.  But it stopped me.   Which reminds me, somehow, of Jimmy Stewart.  He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in architecture, but never practiced.  Instead, Hollywood... Read more

    John 11:45-53 Compare Matthew 26:1-5; Mark 11:18; 14:1-2; Luke 19:47-48; 22:1-2   It’s the miracle of the raising of Lazarus — far too spectacular and far too public to be ignored — that seems to have finally impelled the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem to seek Jesus’ life.   For some background on Caiaphas’s comment that “it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish,” see here.     Read more

      “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”     “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”     Read more