New, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “There are Many Witnesses to the Birth of Christ: A Video Supplement for Come, Follow Me Lesson 3: We Have Come to Worship Him“   ***   President Russell M. Nelson continues to astound.  He is, for one thing, 94 years old.  And, just two days before his visit to California, his daughter fell victim to cancer.  (He refers to her death in a comment cited in the article.)  I hope that I’ll... Read more

    The January/February 2019 issue of Discover includes a fascinating article by Corey S. Powell entitled “The Constant Fight: Behind the astronomical dispute that’s splitting apart the cosmos.”  I’ll try to summarize it here, briefly — at least, the bottom line.  If you’re interested in understanding the two different approaches to the question, please read the article, which is very clear:   Back in the 1980s, a contentious dispute broke out over the value of the so-called “Hubble constant,”... Read more

    Jay Nordlinger has an appalling but hugely important piece (for those who care about Turkey, and for those who care about human rights) in National Review:   “Whisked Away: The Turkish government and its program of kidnappings”   Some here may have noticed that I’m not a fan of Mr. Donald J. Trump, though there are a number of things that the Trump administration has done of which I strongly approve.  (Should Ruth Bader Ginsburg exit the Supreme Court... Read more

    I offer for your possible interest two passages taken from very different works by two very different thinkers.   The first comes from the essay “Sophic and Mantic,” which can be found in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10:360-61:   “Some years ago I made a long study of just what objections had been raised against Mormonism in the past. From the beginning it was always the same. Nobody was really worried about polygamy, which was in fact a welcome... Read more

    I have been a fan of J. B. Phillips’s The New Testament in Modern English since I first bought it while in my twenties.  For a glimpse of the reason why I like it, compare Acts 8:18-23 in the King James Version to the Phillips version:   And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay... Read more

    Bertrand Russell came up with the analogy of a celestial teapot — now, in his honor, often called “Russell’s teapot” — as a way of disparaging what he regarded as the irrationality of religious belief.   I cite a summary of it from the distinguished British journalist, author, and academic John Cornwell, who directs the Science and Human Dimension Project at the University of Cambridge:   If one were to claim that between Earth and Mars there is a teapot in... Read more

    “And We have sent the Book down to you in truth, confirming what you already have of the Book and as a criterion for it. So judge between them by what God has sent down and do not follow their inclinations away from what has come to you of the truth. To each of you We prescribed a law and a method. Had God willed, He would have made you one faith-community, but [He intended] to test you in what He has given you;... Read more

    We drove with four friends up to Sandy, in the southern Salt Lake Valley, where we had dinner and than attended a performance of The Wizard of Oz at the Hale Centre Theatre.   Truth be told, I’ve never been an enthusiastic fan of The Wizard of Oz in any of its forms, including the classic Judy Garland movie.  It just doesn’t do much for me, for some reason.  But — as always at the Hale — this... Read more

    Alas, one of my favorite political magazines, The Weekly Standard, is now dead.  Before expiring, though, it published “‘Deaths of Despair’: What can be done about Americans’ declining life expectancy?”  It’s a sobering read.  What follows is drawn from it:   On 29 November 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (aka the CDC) released three disturbing reports.  One of them, the latest installment of an annual overview of “Mortality in the United States,” disclosed that American... Read more