“Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.” Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957)    Posted from Stardalen, Norway     Read more

    The audience at the 2016 FairMormon conference earlier this month gave this presentation, by Kathryn Shirts, one of the most enthusiastic ovations of the two-day meeting:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/daughters-christ   Posted from Stardalen, Norway     Read more

    The inimitable Jeff Lindsay:   http://mormanity.blogspot.no/2016/08/weeping-wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth.html   Posted from Stardalen, Norway     Read more

    A short but interesting little piece:   http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2016/08/king-noah-and-maya-kingship.html#more   Posted from Stardalen, Norway     Read more

    It seems quite appropriate, given where I’m writing, to post an article such as this.   http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2016/08/22/how_vikings_could_get_away_with_murder_109733.html   My ancestors were a gallant lot.   Incidentally . . .  I once thought, being Norwegian, Danish, English, and Scottish, that I was probably of 50% Scandinavian (and thus, more or less, of 50% Viking) ancestry.  I now think it possible that my Viking background may be higher than half, since the areas from which my English and Scots ancestors... Read more

    An interesting perspective on the question:   http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/08/the_public_should_mistrust_science.html   Posted from Stardalen, Norway     Read more

    Breitbart News, once (before Andrew Breitbart’s sudden, premature, and very unfortunate death) an interesting place for activist conservative journalism of a rather aggressive sort, has long since become a rigidly doctrinaire and often quite unpleasant Ministry of Propaganda for hardcore Trumpulism.   Perhaps beginning to sense that Mr. Donald J. Trump, the Dear Leader of Trumpulism, is currently headed for a defeat of historic, party-realigning proportions in November, Breitbart is now laying the groundwork for a demonology that will... Read more

    The remarks that Grant Hardy delivered at the 2016 FairMormon conference earlier this month are now up online for your reading pleasure:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2016-fairmormon-conference/more-effective-apologetics   I’ve seen reports on the internet that I was enraged by what Grant said, and that, in concert with many of my colleagues, I’m still seething with almost ungovernable fury.   And it’s true that there are a few places in the talk where I may disagree.   (As the game seems to be... Read more

      We’ve spent many hours over the past couple of days driving through the soul-nourishing beauty of rural Norway.   We stayed last night at Røisheim, in a mountain valley about fifteen minutes from Lom, a rustic inn that apparently began as a post-station in the 1600s.  It’s said that Ibsen and Grieg were also (repeat) guests at Røisheim, the buildings of which are all pre-modern.   We’ve passed through unspeakably gorgeous valleys.  We took a brief peek, too,... Read more

    One of the arguments that Drs. Royal Skousen and, more recently Stanford Carmack are making in their remarkable work on the text of the Book of Mormon is that, in most if not all cases, what seems to be “bad” English (especially in the Original Manuscript) turns out to be English that was perfectly good at an earlier stage in the history of the English language – earlier than Joseph Smith’s day and, sometimes, considerably earlier than that.... Read more