https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/20/report-anti-muslim-incidents-mosques-surged-last-year/o13UQg0V0EZU7gf3Q4TOiL/story.html   Of course, anti-Jewish incidents are also surging:   http://europe.newsweek.com/anti-semitic-incidents-college-campuses-nearly-doubled-2015-adl-474394?rm=eu   http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/70368/new-adl-report-shows-sharp-rise-violent-anti-semitic-assaults-u-s/#FVA8OGLIbTvQsjVP.97   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/antisemitic-attacks-uk-community-security-trust-britain-jewish-population   We are, as I’ve said before, in danger of going tribal.  In politics as elsewhere.   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England   Read more

    A pleasant subject to contemplate on a Friday evening:   http://www.space.com/33266-would-aliens-kill-humans-movie-style.html   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    Today is Friday.  So, predictably, there’s a new article up in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/o-ye-fair-ones-revisited/   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,   60         Hath had elsewhere its setting,           And cometh from afar:         Not in entire forgetfulness,         And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come   65         From God, who is our home:   There was a time when the passage above, from William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Early Childhood,” was very well known to Latter-day Saints.... Read more

    We spent some time yesterday looking at the ruins of Furness Abbey, which, at the time of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, was the second richest Cistercian institution in all of England, after an abbey in Yorkshire.  The weather was perfect.  Sunny, but not at all hot.       The Abbey at Furness was established in the 1120s by Stephen, Count of Boulogne and Mortain, who would later become king of England.  ... Read more

    I put up a different link to this story a few days back, and only found out just now that that link was broken.  So here’s another, for those who might be interested:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/21/a-harvard-professor-made-the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-famous-now-she-thinks-its-likely-a-fake/   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    Well, they did it.  The Queen’s subjects in the United Kingdom have voted, 52% to 48%, to withdraw from the European Union.   This wasn’t a neat “conservative”/”liberal” issue.  It doesn’t reflect a conveniently partisan divide.  And many observers are frankly puzzled as to what impact it will ultimately have.  (Right now, the stock and currency markets seem to be in a panic.  The pound has fallen to its lowest level in more than three decades, which is... Read more

    One of the things that strike me about Alma 35 is its depiction of a wicked people (in this case, the Zoramites) who are absolutely enraged . . . by goodness.   There may have been a time when I would have found such a reaction implausible.   That time has long since passed.   I’ve seen it too many times to doubt the possibility.   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    Some of you may have missed this when it was announced at the end of last year:   http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/king-hezekiah-in-the-bible-royal-seal-of-hezekiah-comes-to-light/   There are those who see no historical substance in the pre-exilic portions of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.  They’re wrong.   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-23/antimatter-explainer/7487354?source=realclearscience.com   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more