I promised, the other day, that I would post more details regarding the fireside about Islam that I’ll be doing with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser somewhere in the Phoenix/Mesa area on Sunday, 17 April.   I don’t yet have any more information about the place and time for that event.   However, I can now announce that there will also be an event at the ASU Institute on Saturday evening, 16 April.  (See above.)   And I may be speaking... Read more

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    The latest issue (55/1) of BYU Studies is out:   http://byustudies.byu.edu/content/volume-551-2016   And, even though it contains my review of M. David Litwa’s Becoming Divine: An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture, it still seems worth reading.     Read more

    You might say that Mr. Donald Trump “choked” in Wisconsin.   As he would point out (were he not the candidate in question), he should have won the state.  The February Marquette University poll had him leading Marco Rubio there by ten percentage points, and Ted Cruz by eleven.  In November, he led Cruz by ten points.  By his own standards, that makes him a “terrible candidate.”   I’ve spent very little time in Wisconsin, and haven’t been to... Read more

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433647/are-kurds-still-under-equipped-fight-against-isis     Read more

    http://www.ldsliving.com/Mormon-Missionaries-Sing-Adele-s-Hello-in-this-Hilarious-Parody/s/81778   Thanks to Darby Walters for bringing this to my notice.     Read more

      Alma’s anti-monarchical stance in today’s reading, Mosiah 23,  is quite striking.  It’s plain that Alma had been horrified by King Noah, by the power of a morally depraved king to drag those around him down.  His experience in that king’s court fundamentally affected his political views.   In just a short time, when Alma appears in Zarahemla, he’ll become a key advisor to and ally of King Mosiah.   I don’t think it’s coincidental that, a few chapters later,... Read more

    “Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity . . .  That is what mortals misunderstand.  They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.  And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their... Read more

    I’m comforted, somehow, to realize that America doesn’t have a monopoly on such silliness:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433632/edinburgh-university-safe-space-disagreement     Read more

    An interesting find — suggesting that human grudges and rivalries weren’t, alas, so very different back then from those that we encounter today:   http://www.livescience.com/54285-curse-tablets-uncovered-in-greece.html   My wife and I, between us, belong to several reading groups.  One of them meets on the first Sunday of every month, so we met this past Sunday night.   Our readings for this month were the Oedipus Rex and Antigone of Sophocles and the horribly dark Medea of Euripides.  Both playwrights... Read more