Yesterday, about to board a plane from Salt Lake City Reagan National Airport, I heard an announcement for what sounded like either “Raindeer Kang” or “Rainbeer Kang.”  I think it was the latter.  It may even have been this specific fellow.   That announcement put me in mind of two of the greatest personal names I’ve ever heard — both of them brought to my attention by one of my sons, who is an overflowing fountain of such wonderful... Read more

    A nice Deseret News Christmas piece by Taylor Halverson:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865644066/Jesus-became-like-us-so-that-we-could-become-like-him.html   Posted from Richmond, Virginia   Read more

    Bruce Thornton, a scholar of classics and comparative literature associated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford, offers a thoughtful opinion piece on the annual struggles between secularism, on the one hand, and, on the other, public celebrations of (or even references to) the religious meaning of Christmas:   http://www.hoover.org/research/stakes-war-christmas   Posted from Richmond, Virginia   Read more

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/21/everybody-loves-star-wars-but-heres-why-mormons-especially-love-star-wars/   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

     “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself. “The education of a man is never completed until he dies.”   Posted from Richmond, Virginia   Read more

    Merry Christmas, and death to the capitalist exploiters of the proletariat!   http://existentialcomics.com/comic/112   Thanks to Stephen Smoot alerting me to this poem.   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35151967   Kindly brought to my attention by Jabra Ghneim   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    And now, because I’m feeling rather nostalgic, not exactly for das Vaterland but for nearby German-speaking Switzerland and Austria, here’s a fairly schmalzy rendition of a nineteenth-century German Christmas carol that has happy memories for me.  The song proper lasts only somewhat more than two minutes.  The last minute or so of the recording is a very deliberately “cute” interview by one of the hosts with one of the choirboys.  Feel free to skip it:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-krz1QVLjsY  ... Read more

    This is a fascinating — if slightly longish — article about a discussion with enormous implications, both for science and for philosophy and theology:   https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah     Read more

    This short video, from last year’s Christmas campaign of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is still very much worth watching — and very much worth sharing:   https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1460-he-is-the-gift?lang=eng   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah     Read more