Author: Frank McIntyre

  • The Number One Qualification

    Frank McIntyre

    There are all sorts of characteristics one wants in a Bishop. Ideally he’d be kind, honest, obedient, a good people person, in-tune spiritually, good at administration and delegation, care deeply about the youth, doctrinally aware, and so on. But all of these pale in comparison to what I consider to be by far the leading…

  • Donations

    Frank McIntyre

    “The Faust family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Church Missionary Fund or to the Perpetual Education Fund.” There is a site at lds.org/Faust available for making donations.

  • The Blasphemy of Truth

    Frank McIntyre

    Suppose I claim that I am right about something (which I do with some regularity). Is there any way to avoid the fact that this is also claiming that God agrees with me? And doesn’t that seem blasphemously presumptuous?

  • Great Sermons: Beware of False Prophets and False Teachers

    Frank McIntyre

    I think I must have missed this one when it came out in 1999. Elder Ballard takes the time to list out a few teachings he considers signposts of False Teachers.

  • Prophetic Authority vs. the Law of Averages

    Frank McIntyre

    J. Nelson Seawright put up a post last week that is clearly a Trojan horse designed to undermine liberal Mormons. Sure, it disguises itself as a discussion of how to conceivably be more correct than the General Authorities; but this is obviously just a front. So let me warn all the liberals away from this…

  • Economics and the Vicious Dating Scene

    Frank McIntyre

    Diminishing Returns: Once things start going downhill, bail. Increasing Returns: It can only get better.

  • Markets and Consumer Activism

    Frank McIntyre

    With fair regularity, one hears someone talking of efforts to buy less of some commercial product, either out of a desire for global conservation or because he doesn’t like how it is produced or whatever. Invariably, he comments that his own effect on the market is small, but he wishes to “send a message” or…

  • Memorial Quiz

    Frank McIntyre

    Kristine’s pop quiz prompts me to ask a similar quiz I’ve had on my mind. Think of this as Memorial Day come early. Feel free to cheat if you have to: Name your great grandparents. Name 5 of your great-great grandparents. Name 3 of your great-great-great grandparents.

  • Amazon’s take on the Book of Mormon

    Frank McIntyre

    Amazon.com has an algorithm for noting the “Statistically Improbably Phrases” in any given book. The idea is to look for word combinations that are uncommon generally but common in the book in the hope that this provides potential buyers some insight into what the book is about. Here are the ones for the Doubleday edition…

  • Preserving the Veil from Survey Data

    Frank McIntyre

    Suppose I find that being Mormon raises income, makes your children nicer, and does all sorts of wonderful things. In fact, suppose God blessed every person who converted instantly and spectacularly with beautiful hair and perfect teeth.

  • Quadrupling Fast Offerings

    Frank McIntyre

    About a year or so ago our stake made a move to improve fast offering receipts. The bishop supported this and urged everyone to donate to fast offerings and, in addition to the general admonition, he reinstituted Aaronic priesthood collection of fast offerings after church.

  • Fixing the Minimum Wage

    Frank McIntyre

    It seems pretty clear that we are heading for a hike in the minimum wage. For the many of us who care about poverty reduction, which would be basically all of us, this could be a big deal. The problems with the minimum wage are that it:

  • The Opportunity Cost of Publishing

    Frank McIntyre

    In this excellent post, Rosalynde talks about the gender differences in subject material among Deseret Book writers. This renews the discussion brought up by Taryn Nelson-Seawright on the same difference existing in other Mormon outlets. Explanations abound for this phenomena, ranging from differing preferences to piggy discrimination, but most of them are sort of boring.…

  • Joseph and Moses

    Frank McIntyre

    Most are acquainted with the passage in D&C 130 where God gives a fascinating response to Joseph’s query about the Second Coming:

  • Why Europeans look lazy

    Frank McIntyre

    It is a well established fact that Europeans perform vastly less formal market work than Americans. A less known fact is that this is a recent development— in the late 50s, Europeans worked about 10% more hours, but this has been in steady decline for 40 years, until now they work about 30% fewer hours…

  • Camels, Needles, Heaven

    Frank McIntyre

    Rich people who pay tithing are, by all accounts, still losers compared to the poor. Or, anyway, though their ten percent is a lot more money, it is money that had little effect on their life and so is not a very impressive sacrifice. Thus their salvation is put in jeapardy by diminishing marginal returns!…

  • McBride, Michael

    Frank McIntyre

    We are happy to welcome Michael McBride as a guest-blogger. Mike studies happiness, religion, and the politics of development at UC-Irvine.

  • Authority Roulette

    Frank McIntyre

    I’ve talked about authority a few different times, but I thought I should try writing something up as a post. So here’s a version comparing it to roulette:

  • Testifying of historicity

    Frank McIntyre

    As I was re-reading conference, I came across this closing statement by President Hinckley:

  • Peak oil and taxes

    Frank McIntyre

    On the Urban thread, Jonathan Green pointed out that the major issue with oil scarcity may not be how much oil we have in the ground, but how much we can pump in a given year. If we are maxed out on supply for a year, any oil disaster creates a huge crunch.

  • True Neighbors

    Frank McIntyre

    Suppose that you splurged for the $6 version of the Church’s scriptures on CDROM. It has various ancient language toys that I am in no position to evaluate but am happy to play with. It also has a fun little tool such that when you do a search, you can click on a tab “Sort…

  • Correlation Gone Mad!

    Frank McIntyre

    BCC is hosting an all-star panel of academics on questions relating to correlation. Talking about correlation reminds me of a time from our history when doctrinal correlation efforts were incredibly restrictive.

  • I don’t know why you say goodbye

    Frank McIntyre

    We give many thanks and a fond farewell to both John Fowles and John Payne. We were happy to have them around and enjoyed their posts. In an effort to keep up our streak of powerful yet ubiquitous names, we welcome Ed Johnson as a guest blogger.

  • But what’s worse, is this Payne in here

    Frank McIntyre

    We are pleased to present to you John David Payne as a guest blogger.

  • Jacob Laurence

    Frank McIntyre

    Born 11 days ago, Jacob is happy and healthy as is his (sleep-deprived) mother. A picture of him in the hospital is available here for a few more days.

  • The Mormon Bankrupt

    Frank McIntyre

    Utah has a very high rate of bankruptcy. In 2000 it hovered at around 7 filings per thousand people– twice the national average. This lonely fact has launched a thousand explanations for why Mormons have such a problem with defaulting on their creditors. Clearly, the thinking seems to be, this shows some of the rot…

  • It is a truth universally acknowledged…

    Frank McIntyre

    The setting: An experiment using speed-dates to determine what people want in a first date. These are brief, four minute interactions, after which you write down whether or not you’d be willing to go on a date with that person. The subjects: Columbia University grad students The results:

  • Book of the Mormons

    Frank McIntyre

    OK, you finished it, or got close. Maybe you were done months ago, maybe you read 100 pages in the last day.*

  • Give to the Beautiful

    Frank McIntyre

    We had a seminar recently from an experimental economist out of the University of Chicago. He has done a variety of cool things using field experiments. Let me mention the one he presented. The experiment involved sending people door to door to do fund raising for a (real) charity. The fundraisers (who were college students)…

  • Choose Your Own Adventure

    Frank McIntyre

    Let’s play a game. You can choose between two jobs. One pays $50,000 and the other pays $100,000. You know, or can guess, that if you take the first you will give about $5,000/yr in fast offerings and other gifts to the poor. If you make $100,000 you will give about $15,000. You will also…