Perhaps you missed this one.  In any event, it was quite the opener for Sister Bingham, whose announcement as the new general president of the Relief Society was announced in the afternoon session of General Conference on Saturday, 1 April, to speak at the United Nations on 13 April:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/new-mormon-relief-society-president-speaks-un   I note with some satisfaction that she was accompanied to New York City by Sister Sharon Eubank, a contributor to Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.... Read more

    Yes, they do exist.   But they’re a silent and rather small minority.   In most academic fields — including mine — the default setting is politically leftist, and it’s simply assumed that all decent and informed people agree on socio-political issues.  Dissent isn’t necessarily well-received.   So I found this article interesting:   http://www.nature.com/news/republican-scientists-negotiate-the-trump-era-1.21846     Read more

    A thoughtful essay on the recent changes in Turkey, by the always-interesting George Friedman:   http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2017/04/17/turkey_secularism_and_religion_112299.html     Read more

    “Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”  Russell Kirk (1918-1994)     Read more

    This story generated a bit of national controversy, and understandably so:   http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/utah-judge-rape-sentencing-mormon-bishop-good-man-46804715   See also:   “Judge Who Called Convicted Rapist a ‘Good Man’ Likely Won’t Face Punishment”   The judge’s comment is the sort of remark that, viewed from one angle — and especially when viewed by people seeking a cause for indignation or looking for a weapon to use in a larger war — was sure to stir up trouble:   Rape is obviously not... Read more

    This is one of the things that always worried me about him:   “Surprise: The New York Democrat is a New York Democrat.”   Another thing was his plain admiration for strongman leadership and his lack of demonstrated interest in concepts such as liberty and limited constitutional government, which may perhaps have just been illustrated yet again:   “Erdogan’s Win Pushes Turkey Toward Dictatorship”   “The Meaning of a Phone Call”     Read more

    Thanks to the inspired leadership of President-for-Life-and-Perhaps-Then-Some Robert Mugabe, the nationalist and socialist who has governed the country for the past 37 years — first as prime minister under the memorably-named figurehead Canaan Banana and then, since 1987, as the virtually all-powerful president — Zimbabwe has passed from triumph to triumph.   And, now, Dr. Grace Mugabe Ph.D. has brought even more glory to the nation:     Girls have a higher chance of getting pregnant than boys: Says... Read more

    I offer three very different stories from the region.   First, an odd but . . . umm, happy one, with great photos:   “Can Dubai become the world’s happiest city?”   Second, a heart-rending one, with photos that may well bring you to tears:   “Syria photographer takes action instead of pictures, picks up injured boy”   Third, a discouraging one, as a country that I love takes a major step backward:   “Turkey’s democracy has died”... Read more

    It’s interesting that this appeared in a Catholic publication:   http://catholicsay.com/10-hugely-influential-figures-you-didnt-know-were-mormon/   For what it’s worth:  Relatively late in his life, Philo Farnsworth was sealed to his wife in the Salt Lake Temple, and it seems that he was a worker in that temple in his final years.  So don’t take this article’s comments about his drinking, and so forth, as the last word.     Read more

    I’m reliably informed, by a number of people who don’t know me but who serve as my spokesmen online (they’re all men, so far as I’m aware), that I’m a young-earth creationist.  So the only possible explanation for my enthusiasm for such finds as this one must be that I’m too stupid to realize that 125-million-year-old dinosaur fossils don’t fit very neatly with my dogmatic conviction that the Earth is only six thousand years old:   http://news.byu.edu/news/byu-profs-discover-moabosaurus-utah’s-gold-mine  ... Read more