Anyone who has spent much time in Laie knows that it badly needed adequate lodging for visitors, and that the construction of a new hotel there will both benefit the local economy and the Polynesian Cultural Center enormously and be a significant tourist asset to Oahu’s North Shore.  Moreover, it will provide wonderful internship and work-study opportunities — practicums — for students in the Hospitality and Tourism Management program at Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus.   So President Dieter... Read more

    Doing so might, um, raise a few Constitutional issues, in the United States at least:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423006/john-oliver-prosperity-gospel?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral     Read more

      Read more

      http://www.livescience.com/52003-new-definition-chaos.html     Read more

    Here, a bit out of sequence, is the Interpreter Foundation’s 133rd scripture roundtable:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scripture-roundtable-133-new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-35-be-ye-reconciled-to-god/   In it, Stephen Smoot, Jeffrey Bradshaw, Martin Tanner, Cassandra Hedelius, and Daniel Peterson focus on 2015 Gospel Doctrine lesson 35, which covers 2 Corinthians 1-2, 4-7, 11, 12.     Read more

    John 10:1-18   1.   Latter-day Saints are very familiar with John 10:16, which they see as referring to the Book of Mormon peoples in the New World.  Intriguingly, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, that same passage was a particular favorite with Christopher Columbus.   2.   The image of Christ as the “good shepherd” is a gentle one, expressing his love for his people and his willingness, as John 10:11 puts it, to lay down his life... Read more

    http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/08/31/israeli-archaeologists-unearth-unique-stepped-structure-in-city-david/   Thanks to Kevin Flanigan for calling my attention to this item.     Read more

    “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”  (Maya Angelou)     Read more

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3216627/Koran-Birmingham-thought-oldest-world-predate-Prophet-Muhammad-scholars-say.html   This is a potentially stunning and revolutionary find.   However, I must say that I would be extremely surprised — which is putting it mildly — to somehow  find that the document actually predates Muhammad.  If that were true, of course, it would undercut the entire standard story of the rise of Islam, not only as faithful Muslims have believed it but as scholars have reconstructed it.   However, carbon-dating simply isn’t that precise, and the allowable range... Read more

    The Ensign has published two must-read pieces by Elder Bruce C. Hafen, an emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and, for many years now, a serious thinker and writer on law, on the family, and on law and the family:   “The Proclamation on the Family: Transcending the Cultural Confusion”   “The Temple and the Natural Order of Marriage”   You probably always read every word of the Ensign from cover to cover, but I... Read more