An illustrated joint presentation (not quite 45 minutes long) by Warren Aston and Kirk Magleby regarding the location of Mormon’s Cumorah:       Read more

    For mainstream Christians, today marks the beginning of Holy Week (to which I wish Latter-day Saints paid at least a bit more attention).  Specifically, today is Palm Sunday, commemorating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when throngs of pilgrims spread palm fronds out before him as he rode into the city on (Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-44; John 12:12-19).   This morning, in Egypt, the so-called “Islamic State” marked Palm Sunday by detonating bombs at Coptic Christian churches in... Read more

    A beautiful article in the Deseret News in connection with, but not solely about, the impending dedication of the Paris France Temple:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865677395/Of-Mormons-Versailles-and-the-search-for-peace.html   This is also of interest:   “Mayor of Le Chesnay welcomes Mormons and their temple to France: Elder Neil Andersen, Bishop Gérald Caussé, Mitt Romney offer remarks in French”   And both a video and still photographs of the temple (including its interior) are available here:   “Public Invited to Tour Paris France Temple”... Read more

    This is quite interesting, and it may — we can dream! — lead to helpful treatments:   http://www.popsci.com/sleep-quality-age?src=SOC&dom=tw   Some of my students have absolutely no problem sleeping.  It might be their youth, of course.  (Many will suggest that.)  But I prefer to think that my lectures and my personality are significant contributing factors.  Now, if I could only find some way to monetize my remarkable soporific powers, I could retire wealthy.     Read more

    I just ran across this article, and it got me to thinking of some old favorites:   “Mormons Exposed Reptilians”   “The Shapeshifting Reptilian Mormon Brotherhood”   “Mormon Reptilian/Demons Busted by Bibles?”  (watch to about the 3:30 point)   “The Secret Underworld of Salt Lake City”   If you want some more substantial fare, though, here are two good options:   More than a quarter of a century ago, I reviewed what I still regard today as the greatest and... Read more

    It’s that time again.  Time to post another of my favorite Easter poems, the late John Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter”:   Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven... Read more

    This is an article about the broader world of mainstream Christianity:   http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-church-organist-shortage-20170407-story.html   But my sense is that Latter-day Saints may be facing an analogous problem:  Fewer kids are studying piano, which means that, in the end, there are fewer people available to play the organ for sacrament services, since most (in the LDS tradition, anyway) reach organ via the piano.   So, if you’ve ever had a hankering to learn to play the organ, do it!... Read more

    I can’t really speak to this article from a week ago:   “Draper pulls shelter sites after hundreds protest, boo homeless man”   I wasn’t there.  Some subsequent reports have maintained that there was actually no booing at a homeless man.  I don’t know.  And I don’t know about any specific local issues that may’ve been involved.   But I do know that, however distasteful we may sometimes find it, we are expressly commanded — and not just a... Read more

    Mr. Denver Snuffer has now been excommunicated, and there are signs that he is moving toward establishing a new church of his own.  Sadly, this is unsurprising.  More than a few Saints have been affected by him and his teaching, although (so far as I’m aware) I haven’t met any of them personally.   This is an interesting reply to him:   Response to Denver Snuffer   Posted from Twin Falls, Idaho   Read more

    https://www.seeker.com/space/planets/volcanic-activity-on-ancient-mars-may-have-produced-organic-life   Posted from Twin Falls, Idaho     Read more