The article is worth a quick glance, and, if you can muster the time, Elder Holland’s fifteen-minute speech is quite powerful:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/windsor-conference-religious-persecution-holland     Read more

    Thanks to Charles Steinman for calling my attention to this article:   http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150717-mosaics-synagogue-israel-magness-discovery-archaeology/   Incidentally, if you’ve been thinking about some day visiting the Holy Land, consider this.  We spend considerable time in the Galilee.       Read more

    Some further information on that case of the young returned missionary from Utah who may have been kidnapped twelve years ago to serve as an involuntary tutor to Kim Jong-un:   “News on David Sneddon: Former Missionary May Have Paid a Heavy Price for Fluency in Korean”   “What You Can Do to Bring David Home — Missing U.S. Student David Sneddon”     Read more

    “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” Ralph Waldo Emerson     Read more

    The video is 7.5 minutes long, but it’s well worthwhile and very funny.  Especially as the evidence mounts:     Thanks to my son for calling it to my attention.     Read more

    I’ve signed a petition in favor of including the Libertarian ticket, Gary Johnson and William Weld, in the presidential debates.  It can be found here, and I encourage you to sign it, as well:   https://www.johnsonweld.com/debate   I do this without having actually endorsed them.  (I may yet do so, but I haven’t decided yet.)  I simply think that it would be nice to have an alternative on the debate platform to Mr. Donald J. Trump and Mrs.... Read more

    “Criticizing to destroy is easy, thinking in order to build is much more difficult to achieve.” Tariq Ramadan Read more

    “While . . . media attention goes to the strident atheists who claim religion is foolish superstition, and to the equally clamorous religious creationists who deny the clear evidence for cosmic and biological evolution, a majority of the people I know have no difficulty accepting scientific knowledge and holding to religious faith. . . . “Why do I believe in God? As a physicist, I look at nature from a particular perspective.  I see an orderly, beautiful universe... Read more

    I’m grateful to Todd Galbraith for calling this item to my notice:   “Yeah, but” Discipleship   I’m reminded of a story that I believe I may have told here before:   A friend of mine who has since left the Church once recounted an experience to me, somewhat at his own expense, from graduate school.  A prominent Israeli scholar had come to his university as a visiting professor.  One day, knowing that my friend was a Mormon, he... Read more

    Alexandra DeSanctis responds to the claim of a Episcopalian priest, of all people:   “Religious-Freedom Laws Are Not ‘Unconstitutional Smokescreens for Bigotry’”   But it’s a claim that’s been taken up by the chairman of the United States Civil Rights Commission, as well:   “‘Religious freedom,’ ‘liberty’ just ‘code words’ for intolerance, U.S. Civil Rights chairman says”   Some out there still think that there’s no real problem.  But the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day... Read more