Here’s a significant item from Rachel Mitchell, the respected and experienced veteran sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona who questioned both Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh on behalf of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday last:   “Rachel Mitchell Memo Lists Weaknesses in Ford Claim: READ”   ***   Regarding that third (and already, by far, least credible) Kavanaugh accuser:   “Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick faced own misconduct allegations at past job with tech firm: reports”  ... Read more

    On Saturday night, my wife and I took in a fine Pioneer Theatre Company performance of the multiple-award-winning play Oslo, by J. T. Rogers, on the campus of the University of Utah.   We both loved it.  It’s a very good play.  It’s a play of serious ideas.  In an odd way, therefore, it reminded me of one of my very favorite modern dramas, Copenhagen — which, curiously and very unexpectedly, was written by the very same guy,... Read more

    I’ve been watching with a degree of amusement as a handful of critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have labored mightily, on a couple of message boards, to dismiss the work of Drs. Royal Skousen and John Carmack on the nature of the original language of the English Book of Mormon.  That work was showcased last Tuesday evening in a well-attended presentation on the campus of Brigham Young University, is laid out in meticulous detail... Read more

    Was Darwin wrong?  I continue my notorious war against reason and science by sharing this interesting article:   “What Darwin Didn’t Know About Evolution: New aspects of evolution have come to light with the introduction of advanced technologies that didn’t exist during Darwin’s era.”   Is it possible, is it even conceivable, that we might not have science entirely nailed down yet?  Are we open to “the unsettling possibility that physics as we know it might be very... Read more

    Graham E. Fuller’s 2011 book A World without Islam impressed me very much.  Here are a few of the passages that I marked in it:   “If there had never been an Islam, if a Prophet Muhammad had never emerged from the deserts of Arabia, if there had been no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, wouldn’t the relationship between the West and the Middle East today be... Read more

    With his permission, I share something that my friend and neighbor and, frequently, our amazingly generous helper with Interpreter Foundation technical needs Tom Pittman originally posted on Facebook:   I don’t know what happened between Kavanaugh and Ford, and neither do you. Witnesses would be helpful, but there are none.  In lieu of witnesses, an abundance of judges have stepped forward with verdicts that were pretty much decided years ago when they chose to affiliate with a political... Read more

    Something that I’ve extracted from P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2007):   Some experiencers mention traveling through a tunnel as part of their near-death scenario.  Some refer to this tunnel as long and dark and that they were alone in it throughout the journey.  Others say that there were bright lights that flashed along its walls, or that it was colored or... Read more

    William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson continue to spew out the hatred and narrow-minded vitriol against non-Mormon faiths that have become at least Peterson’s stock in trade:   “Hinduism and India’s transformative ‘axial age'”   ***   Members of the Twelve on the road:   “Polish City of Gdańsk Receives Its First Apostolic Visit: Elder Uchtdorf’s 11-day trip also included stops in London, Frankfurt, Moscow and Kaliningrad”   “Elder Christofferson Participates in G20 Interfaith Forum in Argentina: Latter-day Saint apostle says Church... Read more

    On Friday evening, at Lloyd Miller‘s invitation, my wife and I attended the screening of a new film about his life.  It was presented at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City.   The film, titled Sufi, Saint, and Swinger — directed by the British-Chinese Camilla French and her Colombian husband, Andrés Borda (who was present at the screening), and produced by the British-Iranian Abbas Nokhasteh — is based on Miller’s memoir of the same... Read more

  A curious item from P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2007):   [O]ne woman told me that as she sat next to the bed where her brother lay dying, she began to hear soft melodious music.  She looked around to see if a radio was on, and, as she did, a brilliant light filled the room.  She turned just in time to see her... Read more