Cassandra Hedelius brought this to my attention, noting that whoever came up with this idiotic policy appears to have had little or no contact with actual boys:   http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/05/19/boy-scouts-ban-water-guns-because-theyre-not-kind/   Good grief.   Maybe we should simply strap all young males into soft chairs and make them watch Care Bears cartoons all day.     Read more

    Today’s installment of my weekly column in the Deseret News has been posted:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865629099/The-plates-of-the-Book-of-Mormon-As-material-as-anything-can-be.html   I expect it to irritate at least some people.     Read more

    Lots of photographs and some interesting information:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865629101/LDS-Church-leaders-missionary-couple-offer-support-in-Nepal.html     Read more

    Thanks to Jabra Ghneim for bringing this interesting and hopeful article to my notice:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/morocco-islamic-women-preachers_n_7310894.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051     Read more

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem would have been sooooo much better if he’d left out the religious stuff:   The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and... Read more

    “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference... Read more

    Matthew 17:14-21 Mark 9:14-29 Luke 9:37-43 Compare Matthew 17:9; 21:21; Mark 9:9; 11:22-23; Luke 17:6; John 14:9   1.   Again, these passages, with their rebuke of the disciples for their lack of healing faith, demonstrate rather clearly (to my mind, at least) that the Church was not to be built upon the “rock” of mortal human beings — not even those who had been called to be apostles.   2.   I’ve always loved the humanly real... Read more

    http://chicksontheright.com/blog/item/28871-two-professors-and-a-university-president-actually-defend-traditional-marriage-how-dare-they     Read more

    Jabra Ghneim brings this item to my attention:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.uk/article/church-leaders-attend-launch-of-discover-islam-exhibition   I’m pleased at the consistent willingness of Latter-day Saint leaders at all levels, worldwide, to join in such things — which I’ve personally observed, as well as read about.   Some groups refuse.     Read more

    http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150515-how-weird-is-our-solar-system   1.   One of the “scientific” arguments against religious belief that I’ve repeatedly encountered over the years is the notion that the Copernican “revolution” demoted Earth from its supposedly privileged position in the cosmos and reduced it to its real status as an ordinary, unremarkable planet in a humdrum, run-of-the-mill solar system orbiting a completely mediocre, average minor star in an undistinguished part of an unexceptional galaxy.   This claim, as I noted in my 2013 Summerhays... Read more