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    From yet another of my manuscripts-in-progress:   Such displays of emotion seem difficult to counterfeit.  If they were fake, Joseph Smith must have been guilty of an almost unfathomable cynicism.  But of such cynicism and falsity his friends and associates saw no trace whatever.  “The people fairly adored him,” recounted one woman.[1]  He showed “not the least affectation,” remembered Wandle Mace.[2] “There was not the slightest appearance of ostentation or conscious power on his part,” recollected Mercy R.... Read more

    I’m sorry to note that Elder Robert D. Hales of the Council of the Twelve has died:   “Elder Robert D. Hales Dies at Age 85”   It wasn’t really unexpected, I suppose; he’s been in poor health for quite some time.   Elder Hales wasn’t flashy.  He was quiet.  But he was solid.  And his contributions were considerable.  Someone shared an experience with him online a few days ago, when it was announced that he was entering the... Read more

    Some notes from Janice Miner Holden, Bruce Greyson, and Debbie James, eds., The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation (Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: Praeger, 2009):   “By the early 1970s, resuscitation technology had advanced to the point where people were being brought back from the brink of death in numbers unprecedented in human history. . . .  For the first time in history, enough people were reporting this type of experience that professional health care... Read more

    Here are two further items for the ever-growing file of materials demonstrating that, just as some critics have alleged, the world would be a better place without the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:   “Latter-day Saints Provide Famine Relief in Africa, Middle East: LDS Charities partners with global relief organizations”   “How the LDS Church is changing lives in India”   If you would like to join in these evils, you can easily do so, here:  ... Read more

    When the Jewish exiles returned from their Babylonian captivity and, under the leadership of Nehemiah, began to rebuild Jerusalem, they found Arabs among those who sought to hinder them.[1] These may have been the Nabateans, who were the only northern Arabi­ans to establish a civilization comparable to that of South Arabia in the period before Islam. (In fact, some think that the Nabateans were actually of South Arabian origin; trading colonies from the south are well known in... Read more

    From The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences, by the British intensive-care nurse and researcher Dr. Penny Sartori:   An account related to Dr. Sartori by Lyon White, of Sussex:   “My mother Peggy, whilst in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s disease was no longer able to converse with any coherency at all.  Her conversation consisted of what could only be described as ‘gobble-de-gook’.  She had a spell in hospital.  On one particular visit she was lying on the bed... Read more

    Yesterday, we were watching Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes play with the cosmic dial to create different hypothetical universes.  Let’s do it a bit more:   “The Neutron Universe:  If you think the hydrogen universe is rather featureless, let’s instead increase the mass of the up quark by a factor of 6.  The result is that the proton falls apart.  In a reversal of what we see in our Universe, the proton, including protons buried in the apparent... Read more

    “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”   “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”   “The largest cultural menace in America... Read more

    I haven’t yet decided what to title the book:   From the earliest times, the people of Arabia, though dominantly nomadic, have also included seminomadic and even fully settled groups. Sedentary life was overwhelmingly concentrated in the south, with the inhabitants of north and central Arabia being largely nomadic. The two classes of Arabs seldom got along with one another. Arabic literature is full of references to the contempt felt by nomads for settled folk and to the... Read more