https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/03/mormons-disgust-with-donald-trump-turns-utah-into-close-race.html     Read more

    A collection of exterior and interior photographs:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/sapporo-japan-temple-to-open-for-public-tours   I particularly like the Zen-style rock and sand garden at the base of the principal staircase.     Read more

    It was a pretty spectacular error in an academic social-science article — hilarious to a lot of us, though certainly not to the study’s authors — but it and its enthusiastic reception probably also represent the political/ideological biases that dominate the contemporary social sciences:   http://www.weeklystandard.com/get-me-rewrite/article/2002782   “Confirmation bias,” anyone?   Remember, too, that the article passed peer review before it was published.  Some people out there (I’ve noticed it especially in critics of the FARMS Review and, now,... Read more

    Is there a double standard in the West?  Do Westerners value the lives of those like themselves more than the lives of Muslims?  According to this article, many from the Middle East are drawing that conclusion.   That’s not good.  For a whole host of reasons.   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    Bad news out of Canada for those who believe in religious liberty and, in the United States, in the First Amendment:   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-appeal-court-upholds-law-societys-stand-on-christian-school/article30674427/   Incidentally, Trinity Western University’s “covenant” is very similar to BYU’s Honor Code.   It’s Canada, yes.  But the decision cites a precedent from the United States, and this could well be a harbinger of things to come.   “Virginia Governor Blasts Religious Freedom”   “California bill would limit exemptions for religious colleges”   BYU’s... Read more

    To me, the right to engage in voluntary exchanges is a moral one.  Thus, belief in free markets is an ethical issue even before it’s an economic matter, and the fact that free markets perform far, far better than do command economies is, really, icing on the cake.   I also tend to bristle when people object to freedom.  That some limits are necessary and inevitable is patently obvious.  But so too, in my view, is the need... Read more

    I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the legendary, colorful, brilliant, and deeply flawed General George S. Patton.   Not only because I like the famous 1970 film about him starring George C. Scott.   And not only because he was born in my own home town of San Gabriel, California.   General Patton was baptized and confirmed in San Gabriel’s Episcopal Church of Our Savior, which features a Patton memorial window.  Although he himself died near... Read more

    In the fourth volume of what was then called the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon but which was eventually known as the FARMS Review (and then, very briefly before its murder, as the Mormon Studies Review), John Tvedtnes published a response to a book by the Rev. Wesley P. Walters, a Protestant critic of Mormonism.  In it, he very briefly but intriguingly refers to one of the features of today’s reading, Alma 45.   Walters had claimed “that... Read more

    I’ve had a slight taste of this kind of behavior:   http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/19/technology/laila-alawa-trolling/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool   I suspect, incidentally, that most if not all of those who are sending her such messages support the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.  Please note:  I’m not saying, by that, that all or even most Trump supporters would send “hate tweets” like these.  But I am relatively confident that those who would do so are, if they’re politically conscious at all, overwhelmingly Trumpists.   Can anyone... Read more

    An interesting result of social science research (perhaps especially interesting in connection with the piece that I just posted a few minutes ago):   http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-church-attendance-suicide-20160629-snap-story.html   I dunno.  Dare I say it?  The late Christopher Hitchens’s dictum that “religion poisons everything” is coming to seem . . . well, perhaps not entirely accurate.   Such results don’t prove that religious claims are true, of course.  But they do suggest, in my view, that — to borrow a phrase from... Read more