Here’s a notice that I’m also going to have sent out to the Interpreter Foundation mailing list: A small production crew will be doing some supplemental filming for the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses movie project at Genesee Country Village—about half an hour from Rochester, New York, and not far from Palmyra—from 23 June through 25 June. The film is almost totally finished now, but some relatively small details remain. We are trying to keep costs down by... Read more
An important new article appeared today on the website of the elite science journal Nature: “The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic” Abstract Governments around the world are responding to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic1 with unprecedented policies designed to slow the growth rate of infections. Many actions, such as closing schools and restricting populations to their homes, impose large and visible costs on society, but their benefits cannot be directly observed and are... Read more
Here are two new items on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Understanding Ritual Hand Gestures of the Ancient World: Some Basic Tools” Abstract: The ritual use of hand gestures in covenant-making in ancient times is a topic of peculiar interest to Latter-day Saints. In this article, David Calabro summarizes results drawn from his doctoral research, providing readers with some tools to evaluate ancient gestures. The questions he suggests are novel, as is the way they are... Read more
I enjoyed an article in the current issue of Scientific American about “circumstellar disks.” It’s by a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who is reporting on work carried out at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope high up in the Atacama Desert of Chile: Meredith A. MacGregor, “Astronomers Watch as Planets Are Born: High-resolution images of the debris disks around stars are revealing how solar systems form,” Scientific American (June 2020): 54-61. (The title and... Read more
This is an older item, but one element of it has been on my mind since I first read it, and I still want to comment on it: “More than 1,000 march downtown in more peaceful protest: Mayor issues weeklong curfew for Salt Lake City; governor declares emergency” In the article, we’re told that the leader of the “more peaceful” Salt Lake City protest was one Deja Gaston, of something calling itself the “Party for Socialism and Liberation.”... Read more
The Sabbath seems, especially when one is effectively under house arrest, an appropriate day to do personal and family history, and, candidly, I’ve been prompted quite a bit over the past two years or so to get serious about genealogy. Here, though, is a short sketch of something that came to my mind this morning: My father grew up on a farm outside of the mighty metropolis of Garske, North Dakota. His father had been born in... Read more
An astute reader of this blog who goes under the moniker of dCyl — I know his identity, and have even met him, but don’t feel authorized to use his real name here — has prompted me to return to commenting upon the brief sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: I may be reading too much into this, but I note that the hostile synagogues were all Hellenic synagogues, not Hebrew. I think some of... Read more
One explanation of the apparent fine tuning of the universe is to suggest that ours is just one of a virtually (or actually) infinite number of universes, and that we just happen to live in this one. Most such universes would probably be barren of life. Perhaps most were actually still born; gravity pulled them back into themselves almost instantly after their “Big Bang.” Others never formed galaxies or stars, let alone habitable planets. Fortunately, ours was life-friendly... Read more
My two very recent posts on the surge of coronavirus cases in Utah have received considerable pushback, as I pretty much expected they would: “We’re headed for an upsurge in deaths, and there’s no valid reason for it” “If you’re not taking this seriously, you’re wrong.” The second of the two has come especially under fire. I assiduously try to avoid politics on the Sabbath. But I do not see the coronavirus pandemic as... Read more
One of the most highly valued commenters on my blog is Dr. Sam LeFevre, who, as an official with the Utah Department of Health, has been deeply involved with the Utah’s efforts to manage and to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, he posted a comment on my blog that was so important, in my judgment, that I asked (and received) his permission to share it on the main portion of my blog. Here it is: Since this... Read more
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