This is a very nice story, with both Muslim and, if you will, “feminist” connections:   “Born in a refugee camp, she’s now flying solo around the world”   ***   I’ve come across a very interesting pie chart of the world’s languages, and of their proportional representation in the world’s population.   It can be slightly misleading, though.  For example, English is probably much more important than its raw number of principal-language speakers would suggest, because, right now,... Read more

    We’re just back from an entertaining performance, at the Hale Center Theater in Orem, of the musical Tarzan.  I was somewhat into live theater long before I met my wife, but marrying a theater major has certainly made that interest a significant factor in my life.  For which I’m grateful.   I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here again, and I’ll almost certainly say it again in the future:  The Hale theaters are a real Utah... Read more

Revised and reposted. Read more

    The New Yorker, which broke the news of Anthony Scaramucci’s incredibly foul mouth in the first place, continues its Pulitzer-destined reporting on this important story:   “Comedians Protest Anthony Scaramucci’s Ouster”   By the way, I’ve now served almost as long in a senior White House position as Mr. Scaramucci did.   ***   “Why Scaramucci had to go”   ***   I was speculating to my wife yesterday that it was John Kelley, the former Marine general who is... Read more

    There is a short YouTube video making the rounds — I don’t know whether or not it was recorded with his permission — in which Richard Bushman, whom I consider a friend, is shown saying that “the dominant narrative” of Mormon history is “false”:     Some critics take this to mean that, in Dr. Bushman’s mature judgment, after a highly respected career spent not only in Mormon history specifically but in American history more generally, and after... Read more

      The invaluable Jeff Lindsay, a member of the board of the Interpreter Foundation, continues his critique of Duane Boyce’s current article series in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   “Unnecessary Attacks, Part 2: In Defense of Grant Hardy”   For the articles published by Duane Boyce in his series thus far, two of three, see here and here.   So that there will be no misunderstanding, by the way, I note for the public record that... Read more

    Have any of you run across these two stories before?   “California Woman Livestreamed Dying Teen Sister on Instagram After Car Crash”   “Florida teens who recorded drowning man will not be charged in his death”   What do you think?  Do such incidents merely reflect human depravity?  Or do they represent something new?  Perhaps a detachment from reality caused by a culture of video games and routinized Hollywood violence?   In any case, they’re disgusting.   ***... Read more

    Everything begins with light.   It’s the cosmic energy out of which everything else proceeds.  Matter follows, in second place.   Amazingly, and in ways that run quite parallel to the principles of modern physics, the great world religions commonly describe light as the original power from which all else arises.  It is the source of everything.   In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the... Read more

    We went to see the film Dunkirk today.  In IMAX (which I recommend, if at all possible) at Jordan Commons.   Perhaps it’s partly because I’ve been thinking a lot about the Second World War this summer — e.g., we took a trip to Normandy back in late May, I read Last Hope Island a few weeks ago, and I just finished a book by Wolfgang Benz titled Der deutsche Widerstand gegen Hitler [“The German Resistance against Hitler”] — but I liked... Read more