With her kind permission, I’m sharing something here that Margaret Blair Young posted on Facebook this past Saturday.  I think it’s important:   I lost three former students to suicide this past year. It is astounding to me. My sister reported that they had three suicides within two blocks of her home last year. Another sister works at the VA with traumatized veterans who often have suicidal ideation. I discussed what seems to be an epidemic of suicides with... Read more

    Some critics of Islam — significantly, I think, few if any of them actual scholars on the subject or people who have resided for very long as civilians in predominantly Islamic societies — contend that it’s Islam itself that creates terrorists and drives people to violence.  Thus, one might reason, greater devotion to Islam, superior piety, deeper Muslim learning, more faithful engagement in prayer and fasting and almsgiving, would tend to correlate with greater commitment to violent jihad.... Read more

    I read Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death (2013), by the Anglo-American specialist on cardiac-arrest resuscitation Sam Parnia, M.D., Ph.D., a few months ago.  Parnia is a former fellow in critical care medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.  At the time that he wrote Erasing Death, he was an assistant professor of critical care medicine at the State University of New York and its director of resuscitation research.... Read more

    I’m pleased to announce that videos of the presentations that were given on the campus of Brigham Young University on 10 November 2018 at the fourth biennial “Temple on Mount Zion” conference are now beginning to appear on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2018-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/   These videos are, and will continue to be, available for viewing at no charge.  However, they were not produced without cost — so, at the risk of sounding like a broken record,... Read more

    There is something in these little reports on the late Chérif Chekatt that is worth noting:   “‘Gangster-jihadist’: The profile of the Strasbourg terrorist is a familiar one”   “Chérif Chekatt: who is the Strasbourg shooting suspect? French police say the gunman is one of 12,000 ‘gangster-jihadists’ who exist under the radar”   Did you spot it?   The existence of a category labeled “gangster-jihadists” suggests that these folks aren’t simply the devout children of quietly pious Muslim families who... Read more

    Some time ago, I read Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death (2013), by the Anglo-American specialist on cardiac-arrest resuscitation Sam Parnia, M.D., Ph.D.  A former fellow in critical care medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, he was, at the time he wrote this book, an assistant professor of critical care medicine at the State University of New York and its director of resuscitation research.   Here are a... Read more

    New, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   “Book Notice: Becoming the Beloved Disciple“   ***   In case you missed these pieces:   “Gregory L. Smith, ‘Gossamer Thin: 2 Nephi’s “Flaxen Cord” and the Anti-Masonic Thesis'”   ***   On re-reading it, I see that I wasn’t precise enough in the first item in the list that I recently sent out to donors and volunteers and then posted here on my blog.  This is how that item,... Read more

    It seems that CNN is in the process of producing a two-hour documentary on the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, to appear sometime next year on its HLN channel.   I’ve just returned from being interviewed for slightly more than an hour by CNN’s field producer on the project.   It has been literally years since I’ve thought seriously about the Smart case, and I told CNN’s representatives that in advance.  After all, the competency hearing for Brian David Mitchell,... Read more

    Our friends Jeri and Steve Covey kindly invited us to their welcoming home last night (along with quite a few others, including a number of friends) for an evening of excellent Christmas music — violinists, pianists, vocal solos, choral quartets and sextets, a harpist, along with a couple of superb dancers — followed by excellent Christmas food.  The musical portion of the program concluded with all of us singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.  It was a... Read more

    Since, to a substantial but not exhaustive degree, I am the result of Norwegian ancestry, perhaps this can count as family history:   “First Stone Age farmers in Norway ‘gave up’ after short period of time: The end of the Stone Age, or Neolithic, was a time of major change. People tried their hand at farming for the first time. Researchers have now re-analysed findings throughout southern Norway from this time period.”   More on ancient agriculture, but... Read more