https://www.memri.org/reports/owner-egyptian-daily-response-recent-cairo-church-bombing-nothing-justifies-crimes   Posted from Alexandria, Virginia (not Alexandria, Egypt)     Read more

    It’s a bitterly cold night in the Washington DC area.  But we enjoyed it nonetheless.   We attended a performance tonight, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, by the Folger Consort.  They did The Second Shepherds’ Play, one of the most popular medieval English mystery plays.  It survives in a sixteenth-century manuscript that belonged to the Catholic Towneley family of Lancashire — Protestant authorities shut the mystery plays down in England in the 1570s — and is now held... Read more

    This is quite interesting, but it also strikes me (given the paucity of actual evidence) as highly speculative:   http://www.livescience.com/57203-lucy-early-human-species-was-polygynous.html   I can easily imagine several other explanations for the very limited data, and, barring additional discoveries, I don’t see how we can rule them.   Posted from Alexandria, Virginia     Read more

    Here’s the background on an excellent and growing series of podcasts involving faithful Latter-day Saint scholars and thinkers:   http://www.millennialstar.org/can-we-talk/   And here’s a good resource on the unfortunate “Letter to a CES Director” that has, despite its fairly comprehensive lack of merit, had considerable harmful influence on some Latter-day Saints:   Homepage   Posted from Alexandria, Virginia     Read more

    The latest installment of my weekly Deseret News column has appeared, and, as usual, most of the folks writing in to the Deseret News about it don’t like it at all:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865669327/The-Book-of-Mormon-at-Christmas.html   I always get a kick, by the way, out of those who complain that “Peterson should also have discussed x” or “Peterson didn’t address y.”  I’ve been doing these columns for roughly six years now, I think.  Even without including the joint semiweekly Hamblin/Peterson Saturday... Read more

    Oy veh!   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443008/university-holiday-party-not-inclusive-fiscal-year-texas-professor-guidelines?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202016-12-14&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives   In some respects, there are few stupider places on Earth than certain American college campuses.   If this story is accurate, one college in Texas seems to have achieved a whole new level of idiocy.     Read more

    The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.  (Charles Dickens)     Read more

    http://www.dailywire.com/news/11629/report-here-single-reason-romney-lost-sec-state-hank-berrien   I’m proud of Governor Romney for doing the right thing, and for having the integrity to stick to his principles.   Thanks to Jacob Billings for bringing this analysis to my attention.     Read more

    Donald Trump is number two.   Guess who’s number one?   http://www.forbes.com/powerful-people/list/#tab:overall     Read more

    Despite having been recently forbidden by one of my readers ever to post on political subjects again, I’m going to plunge ahead and do it nonetheless.   Two items from David French on the Trump administration’s orientation toward Vladimir Putin and Russia:   “How Russia Wins”   “The Trouble with Tillerson”   And, since I’ve been asked how “Never Trump” people like me are intending to respond to the ascendancy of Trumpism, I share this:   “No, Trump’s Conservative... Read more