Five quotations from the great Irving Berlin:   “The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.”   “Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.”   “After you get what you want you don’t want it.”   “Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life.”  (referring to his early-childhood poverty)   “I gave up trying to get your mother to economize,”... Read more

      If it’s Friday, there must be a new article from Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.  And, whaddya know?, there is:   Improvisation and Extemporaneous Change in the Book of Mormon (Part 2: Structural Evidences of Earlier Ancient versus Later Modern Constructions)   Or, if that link doesn’t work, try this one.     Read more

        You should meet the man who wants to strip your church of its tax-exempt status, deprive your tithes and offerings of legal recognition as charitable gifts, and single your faith out for punitive action by the Internal Revenue Service:   “LGBT activist plans ad blitz targeting Mormon church’s tax-exempt status”   If you support the moral teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he says that you’re motivated by hatred and he regards you... Read more

    “When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.”  Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993)       Read more

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442900/godspeed-john-glenn   His was a titanic name when I was a boy.  And now the last of the Mercury 7 astronauts is gone.  It’s the passing of an era.   “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit... Read more

    Alas, we’re not ranked Number One.  But Brigham Young University is keeping pretty good company these days, just behind Duke University and Johns Hopkins University and just ahead of the universities of Munich and Edinburgh:   https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/best-universities-graduate-jobs-global-university-employability-ranking-2016   “Education,” said Brigham Young, “is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.”     Read more

    A discovery just off the Mediterranean coast of Israel at Tel Dor, roughly twenty miles south of Haifa:   http://www.timesofisrael.com/rare-find-reveals-previously-unknown-roman-ruler-in-judea/   And here are some finds from Caesarea Maritima, somewhat further to the south:   http://www.archaeology.org/issues/227-1609/trenches/4739-trenches-israel-caesarea-roman-figurines     Caesarea Marítima will be the first stop on the first full day of our Israel tour in May, as we drive northward from Tel Aviv.     Read more

    I had a lot of fun writing this vicious, mean-spirited, deeply deceitful, arrogant, slanderous, and anti-intellectual Editor’s Introduction for the old FARMS Review of Books back in 1997.     Read more

    This is a fascinating story from 2005, brought to my attention on Facebook by “Larry Adores-Brenda Farris”:   https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews   So far, the most information that I’ve found about the sequel is in the relevant German Wikipedia article.     Read more

    So much for la liberté:   “French Senate Bans Posting of Pro-Life Information Online”     Read more