Continuing with some thoughts on the earth’s atmosphere from my previous post on the subject, “The Thin Blue Line (1)”:   Our atmosphere as it exists today probably derives (as our oceans also do) from the “degassing” of the primitive semi-molten earth, supplemented by later additions belched up from volcanoes and emitted by hot springs.  The atmosphere of early geologic times was made up of such gases as hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and various... Read more

    The 11 August 2019 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show is now available for listening at your convenience, at no charge, and shorn of commercial and other interruptions.  Participants in the conversation were Terry Hutchinson, John Gee, and Kevin Christensen, and they covered the recently-concluded 2019 FairMormon Conference and then, in the second hour of the broadcast program, focused on the upcoming Come, Follow Me lesson #34 devoted to 1 Corinthians 8-13:   Interpreter Radio Show — August 11, 2019... Read more

    My wife and I are just back from seeing the film The Lion King.  Remarkable animation.  Or whatever it is.   ***   Stephen Smoot offers a good review of Steven C. Harper, First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2019). 262 pp. + index. Print: $35.00. Ebook: $14.00:   “Book Review: First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins”   ***   I was unable to attend or listen to Elder Gary Stevenson’s devotional address for this... Read more

    For me — and, I think, for my wife — the big surprise of the 2019 Utah Shakespeare Festival was the Festival’s production of The Conclusion of Henry VI: Parts Two and Three.   Candidly, I wasn’t really looking forward to this particular play, which is an amalgamation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI: Part II and his Henry VI: Part III.  Neither of those plays is very commonly performed — their production in Cedar City this year is part... Read more

    Are there other planets out there like Earth?   Very likely so.  Here’s some recent research out of Brigham Young University, prominently featuring Professor Darin Raggozine:   “How many Earth-like planets exist in the universe?”   As often happens, I can’t help but think in this context of a passage from the Pearl of Great Price:   “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten. .... Read more

    One of the books that we read in my “Islamic Humanities” course — in fact, the very first book that we read — is a retelling of the Kalila wa-Dimna or Kalila and Dimna.  I would rather have had the students read the text itself (in translation, of course), but I haven’t found a good translation that’s readily and inexpensively available.  (That is a serious lacuna — unfortunately, one of many — in the field.)   Kalila and... Read more

    Filming of the dramatic portions of Witnesses will begin very shortly.   We’re covered for extras in Utah, I believe, but we’re still looking for movie extras — probably about a hundred of them, altogether — in the distant locations:   Upper Canada Village (Ontario, very close to the U.S./Canada border at New York state) 5-11 September 2019 We’re particularly “needy” for this area, which is somewhat remote.  It’s about eighty minutes from Ottawa, or slightly more than... Read more

    “Fools’ names and fools’ faces,” my mother would sometimes remind me, “are often seen in public places.”   I haven’t mentioned this here (or anywhere else) before but, now that I discover that it has already been publicly announced, I suppose that I should say something.  Certainly I should express my gratitude to Scott Gordon and John Lynch and the others involved at FairMormon:   2019 FairMormon Lifetime Achievement Award   I wasn’t kidding when I said that... Read more

    Last night, my wife and I enjoyed dinner with friends and then went with them to a performance of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella at the Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy.   I have to say that no particular song in the musical struck me as very memorable.  (Since it’s a Rodgers and Hammerstein creation, I was surprised.)  That said, the production was thoroughly enjoyable.  It was, for one thing, visually stunning.  The on-stage dress changes for the fairy... Read more

    Bill Hamblin and I published the following column in the Deseret News on Friday, 16 August 2019:   “Is religious faith a disease to be cured?”   ***   This is an interesting, sobering, and provocative article:   “How a Silent Cosmos Led Humans to Fear the Worst”   ***   And, in a different way, these articles too are sobering:   “At the bottom of a glacier in Greenland, climate scientists find troubling signs”   “July 2019... Read more