No!   No, it doesn’t!   No!   Snopes does a workmanlike job on this utterly bogus claim:   http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/quran911.asp   I’ve been confronted with this alleged prophecy more times than I can count.  There is no merit in it.  None.  Zero.  Zilch.  Zippo.  Nada.  The word eagle (or, more precisely, its Arabic equivalent) never occurs anywhere in the Qur’an, let alone at 9:11.   Come on, folks.  Look at the reference:  9/11.  Really?     Read more

    Today’s reading, Alma 18, continues the dramatic story of Ammon among the Lamanites.   I will concentrate on one small passage:    24 And Ammon began to speak unto him with boldness, and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God?  25 And he answered, and said unto him: I do not know what that meaneth.  26 And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit?  27 And he said, Yea.  28 And Ammon said: This is God.   I... Read more

    As I’ve fallen deeper and deeper into doddering geezerhood, I’ve found myself becoming appallingly sentimental.   If you haven’t yet seen this video — nearly twenty-five million people have — you might find yourself tearing up a bit, as I did:   http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/06/03/video-girl-receiving-doll-with-matching-prosthetic-goes-viral.html       Read more

    Don’t react to this author’s take on the issue, please, until you’ve actually read the article.  Closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and chanting “Trump 2016!” isn’t a cogent response.     Read more

    The invaluable Jeff Lindsay continues his examination of certain attempts to explain Lehi’s dream away as a product of merely modern and entirely this-worldly “inspiration”:   http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-great-and-spacious-book-of-mormon.html     Read more

    Some people need to eat gluten-free.  But only a few.  For the rest, gluten-free diets seem to be a hysteria without reason:   http://www.wsj.com/articles/gluten-free-water-a-fad-without-a-grain-of-sense-1464821351     Read more

    Many have pointed to Mr. Donald Trump’s recently offered list of conservative/libertarian judges — he said that he would probably consider people like these (or, ominously, “others”) when nominating someone to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court — as evidence that he would be much better in the White House than Hillary Clinton.   Maybe.   On that particular point.   In this article, though, a number of leading legal scholars, many of them quite prominent in... Read more

    An interesting essay might be written on the possession of an atheistic literary style.  There is such a thing.  The mark of it is that wherever anything is named or described, such words are chosen as suggest that the thing has not got a soul in it.  Thus they will talk not of love or passion, which imply a purpose and a desire.  They will talk of the “relations” of the sexes, as if they were simply related to... Read more

    http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/stephen-hawking-angers-trump-supporters-with-baffling-array-of-long-words       Read more

    Sad news:   https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/muhammad-ali–simply–the-greatest—dead-at-74-042902069.html   There was much to admire in Muhammad Ali.  He was, in many ways, a larger than life figure.   And his last two or three decades were very sad.   He’s now been released, though, from the prison of a dysfunctional body — such an ironic and unexpected situation for so great an athlete.   Rather like Beethoven going deaf.     Read more