http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/trump-oil-isis-iraq/index.html   I’m deeply uncomfortable with President Trump’s notion that we should have seized Iraq’s oil and his hint that we might still find an opportunity to do so.   Leaving aside the ethical issues, such a practice would make us look like a nation of pirates, because we would be acting piratically, and would seem to confirm accusations that we really don’t care about freedom and justice but are simply greedy and rapacious colonialists.  We would be... Read more

    The question of determining a continent’s precise center is somewhat more difficult than one might assume at first glance.  But we can take comfort in the fact that, this being the United States of America, there’s a possibility of litigation!   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/science/north-america-geographical-center-north-dakota.html   Surprisingly, neither Manhattan nor Hollywood appears to be in the running for the title.     Read more

    From the indispensable Jeff Lindsay:   http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-christian-watchman-and-its.html     Read more

    The latest installment of my weekly Deseret News column is up:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865671841/Why-are-there-two-sets-of-official-Book-of-Mormon-witnesses.html     Read more

    There are worse crimes than burning books.  One of them is not reading them.  Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)     Read more

    One of the places we’ll visit on our Egypt tour in May — and one of my favorite places in Egypt altogether — is the pyramid complex at Saqqara, to the south of Cairo and of the more famous pyramid complex at Giza.   I love Saqqara for many reasons.  One of them has nothing to do with the pyramids there at all:  It’s about as clear a place as I know for tourists to see the stark difference... Read more

    A valuable meeting, it seems, on an important topic — and one that is very much on the minds of the Brethren:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865671741/Elder-Oaks-urges-all-Church-members-to-defend-religious-freedom.html     Read more

    Some of you may recall the 1993 movie Rudy.  It was written by Angelo Pizzo and directed by David Anspaugh, who had previously worked together on the 1986 film Hoosiers, and it starred Sean Astin, who subsequently went on to play (along with many other roles) Sam Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.   According to the Wikipedia article about it, Rudy was the first movie that the administration of the University of Notre Dame allowed to be shot on... Read more

    A couple of days ago, I posted a link to an item by Matt Roper titled “A New York Cumorah? Not a Hill We Have to Die On”:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2017/01/new-york-cumorah-not-hill-die.html   Among other things, Roper’s article calls attention to what is often styled the “two Cumorahs theory,” which is a common correlate of Mesoamerican limited geographical models for the Book of Mormon.   In response, a number of people have written to me saying that they believe that,... Read more

    Some of you might enjoy an occasional look at the website of Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who has taken special interest in such matters as environmental statistics:   http://www.lomborg.com   Lomborg is very controversial in some circles, but he’s often quite interesting to read because of his contrarian, skeptical bent on certain commonly held and fashionable notions.  However, he’s both gay and vegetarian, which may perhaps, I think, earn him some degree of tolerance from the Left.... Read more