Yesterday, my wife and I took a tour of Shangri La.   I’m not making that up.   Shangri La: Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design is the former ocean-side Honolulu winter home of the late tobacco and power-company heiress Doris Duke (d. 1993), who was fascinated with the art of the Islamic world.   I had never been to it before.   It actually has, we were told, a larger collection of Islamic materials than any other museum in... Read more

    Dr. Paul McHugh, formerly a very widely respected psychiatrist at what is often ranked as the top medical school in the United States, is making a serious bid to become one of the most hated and reviled people in America:   http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgendered-men-dont-become-women-they-become#.WWG4Dhsva6k.facebook   And, obviously, his position has no merit.  After all, he’s old, for one thing.  And rumor has it that he’s Catholic.  Moreover, lots of people in the establishment in his field — a field in which... Read more

    Back on 13 June 2017, my colleague and friend Ralph Hancock, political philosopher that he is, offered a thoughtful piece about feminism in the pages of the Deseret News:   “Aren’t we all feminists?”   I’m very sympathetic to what he wrote — no, let me just come right out and say that I agree with him — and I regard it as raising good points for discussion even with those who might fundamentally disagree.   That’s what... Read more

    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/tanzania-volcano-eruption-ancient-humans-science/   Posted from Honolulu, Hawaii     Read more

    “The loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean.” “No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done.  Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same.  For me the balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing... Read more

    I admit that, for one reason or another, I haven’t closely followed the controversy over Trump campaign contacts with the Russians.  At first, the mere thought was shocking.  But then the supporting evidence seemed fairly vague, and I lost interest in monitoring every twist and turn.  Many in the news media, and many Democrats (emphatically including those who call themselves the “Resistance”), have appeared to me to be yelling that the sky was falling so very often that... Read more

    I’m grateful to Donlu Thayer, of BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies, for alerting me to this article:   https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/04/05/orthodox-jew-describes-his-positive-experience-christian-university-essay   I couldn’t help but reflect on Brigham Young University as I read it.   I think that we fall somewhere between the two “ideal types” sketched by Professor Helfand.  We don’t require faculty to sign on to a creed or a statement of faith, although all candidates chosen for prospective hiring are interviewed by a... Read more

    My introduction to Volume 25 of Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture has appeared:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-life-giving-water-of-the-restoration/   Its publication marks the 260th consecutive Friday on which at least one article has appeared in Interpreter.  The Interpreter Foundation was established 261.5 weeks ago.   Posted from Honolulu, Hawaii     Read more

    The word shari‘a evokes considerable worry and sometimes even paranoia in some circles.  That’s unfortunate, and it rests, largely though not quite entirely, on a great deal of ignorance and occasional disinformation.   This short article by the Turkish journalist and intellectual Mustafa Akyol might be helpful.   Posted from Honolulu, Hawaii     Read more

    As is usual whenever the Salt Lake Tribune mentions Mormonism, frothing-at-the-mouth haters are out in strength in the “comments” section.  But they hardly matter.   http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/5504732-155/usa-today-poll-lds-churchs-polynesian   My wife and I drove over to Laie today, where we had lunch with Jennifer Clark Lane and Keith Lane, of Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus, at the still relatively new Hukilau Marketplace located directly adjacent to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  Afterwards, we strolled around the Marketplace for a while, and then we went... Read more