Here’s an item that I missed from over a week ago, about initial Church efforts to aid victims of the massive recent earthquakes in Nepal:   https://www.lds.org/church/news/relief-efforts-continue-in-nepal?cid=HP_WE_5-20-2015_dPAD_fCNWS_xLIDyL2-2_&lang=eng     Read more

    The vast temple complex at Angkor Wat, founded in the 1100s at a Hindu shrine, though it later became Buddhist, is another of the means by which religion has blighted our world.   In the twentieth century, though, a group of idealistic atheist reformers called the Khmer Rouge sought to reform and transform Cambodia.     Read more

    “There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions and no peace among the religions without dialogue.” Father Dr. Hans Küng, SJ   Read more

    Nathaniel Hancock called my attention to this astonishing story:   http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/heads-christians-win-tails-they-lose/     Read more

    Matthew 17:24-27   This curious little item appears only in the gospel of Matthew.   St. Peter’s fish, a species of tilapia, seems to have originated in Africa but to have reached the Sea of Galilee soon after it was formed about 20,000 years ago.   Restaurants all around the lake serve essentially the meal shown above.  On the tours that my wife and I lead there at the end of each April, we always enjoy a group lunch at... Read more

    One of the complaints leveled against Mormon culture asserts that Utah has the lowest college completion rate for women in the United States (which may well be true; I simply haven’t verified it), and that Mormonism deserves the blame for this alleged fact.   I was struck, in that light, to read this, from a recent interview with Kevin Worthen, the still relatively new president of Brigham Young University:   The good news for BYU is that women... Read more

    It reminds me of something I found in a logic book many years ago:   I love you. Therefore, I am a lover. All the world loves a lover. You are all the world to me. Therefore, you love me.   Now, I freely admit that these two specimens of logical argumentation seem to be working in vaguely opposite directions.   But the world is a complicated place, and you have to follow logic wherever it takes you.... Read more

    For the 148th consecutive Friday, a new article has been published by the ever-dying Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/getting-cain-and-gain/   This is beginning to resemble the famous “Liebestod” (“Lovedeath”) from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, in which Isolde, herself about to die, sings and sings and sings over Tristan’s corpse.  For a death scene, it’s pretty long.  (Of course, it’s also exceedingly beautiful.  As, I humbly suggest, is the perpetually dying Interpreter.)     Read more

    I’ve actually had two or three friends/acquaintances who’ve been killed while bicycling, and several more who came very close to dying (and, in one or two cases, were seriously injured).   I used to ride a bicycle to work every day in southern California, about 45 minutes each way.   I’ve thought about taking it up again, but one of the things that works against it is the bad driving that I often see.   Anyway, I welcome... Read more

      This is extraordinarily sad:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418704/fall-palmyra-strategic-historical-and-human-loss-tom-rogan   I wish we had a president.     Read more