As I’ve noted, the Palestinian River Jordan isn’t very impressive, physically.  We’re in a historical drought, of course, and enormous growth of population and consumption of water for agricultural and culinary use has made that drought even worse.  Still, though, Mark Twain joked that, growing up an occasional church-goer along the Mississippi, he had imagined the Jordan to be fully 18,000 miles wide — and it was never that, nor anywhere close.   And yet it bears enormous... Read more

    Today involved a lot of driving.  A lot.  We hit the road at 5:45 AM, leaving our hotel at Petra.  We had to reach the border crossing between Israel and Jordan by about 10 AM, because that crossing was closing early today.  (It’s the tail end of the Passover holiday.)   We arrived at the King Hussein Bridge (also famous as the “Allenby Bridge,” named after the great British general who figures in Lawrence of Arabia) on time,... Read more

    Today’s Deseret News column is about a book that I really liked, and that I intended to write a column about but apparently never did:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865653076/Taking-a-Leap-of-Faith-in-Bennetts-book-on-the-origins-of-the-Book-of-Mormon.html   Posted from Tel Aviv, Israel     Read more

    Truth be told, I never knew what the title meant that was given by the Deseret News to this late 2012 column:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765617678/The-divinity-of-Christ-is-absolute.html   But I stand by the column.   Posted from Tel Aviv, Israel     Read more

    I suspect that this is true in more fields than just military generalship.  It’s the difference between good artists and great ones, between good musicians and great ones, between competent writers and geniuses, between craftsmen and original creators:   Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. T. E. Lawrence   We all have control, more or less,... Read more

    I was going to guess that it was stupidity.   But it seems that I was wrong:   http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/04/26/what-is-the-strongest-force-in-the-universe/#5dbbc2467060   Posted from Petra, Jordan     Read more

    A quite long but very interesting day.  At least, I hope (and believe) that the people in the group found it so.     We spent the first part of the day walking in and around the ruins of Petra.  Then we drove to Wadi Rum, where much of the story of Lawrence of Arabia took place, and where the film of that name and the recent movie The Martian were both shot.  One of the people there... Read more

    As we’ve been traveling in an overwhelmingly Muslim country — our bus driver and the armed tourist policeman assigned to us are both Muslims, as well — I’ve been discussing Islam on the bus.  And this is one of the points I’ve been stressing:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765619974/Allah-is-not-pagan-term-2-it-means-God.html   Posted from Petra, Jordan     Read more

    This Deseret News column, published quite a while ago, isn’t quite appropriate to the season.  But I’ll be passing through Jerusalem tomorrow, most likely, and it’s certainly appropriate to the place:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865576457/The-holy-light-of-Easter-in-Jerusalem.html   Posted from Petra, Jordan     Read more

    All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. T. E. Lawrence Posted from Petra, Jordan     Read more