Author: Kaimi Wenger

Group blogging can be done in one of two basic ways: Topical or ad hoc. Ad hoc group blogs allow members to post at any time on any subject. Today Nate posts on sugar beets, tomorrow Jim writes about Heidegger, and the next day Kaimi is whining about gender issues. Topical blogs, as the name…

See here for the announcement.

Should members feel entitled to correct their Priesthood leaders, based on their own understanding of higher authorities?

This review contains good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news: Fire in the Bones is pretty disappointing.

I’m the primary pianist, and so I’ve seen R. nearly every Sunday over the past few years. She’s a bright and polite young woman who comes to church regularly with her mother. She just turned 12, and graduated from primary into young women’s. And like a typical 12-year-old, R. is just starting to turn into…

I don’t have a Mother’s Day post to contribute, really. Not a real one, anyway, and certainly nothing like the stories that three mothers have already posted here. But I do have a post that is tangentially Mother’s-Day-related. It’s mostly about a little girl.

We don’t usually pay much attention to the Ascension. In some other religions, such as Catholicism, the Ascension has particular theological significance. For us, it’s sort of a theological afterthought. Part of this probably stems from the difference in focus — we don’t really discuss how or why he ascended, focusing instead on Jesus’s Atonement…

I just had an interesting discussion with my Catholic friend, “C.” The topic: What are the boundaries of suicide? In particular, when does acquiescence to harm, or deliberate participation in likely-death acts, become suicide?

I’m happy to introduce our latest guest blogger: Elisabeth Calvert Smith. Elisabeth is an attorney for the Massachusetts Department of Labor. (The astute reader may realize that T & S seems to be returning to its law roots, with attorneys now constituting the past two guests, three of the past four, and four of the…

Over at Volokh.com, there’s a fun little contest going on: Name the highest political figure of various minority groups. Thus, Eugene writes: Who are now the highest-ranked, and who have been the highest-ranked [minority groups listed] in U.S. government positions, federal or state, appointed or elected. For our purposes, though, let’s say that the rank…

There’s an interesting discussion over at M* about how an LDS health-care worker ought to handle a request by a patient for an abortion. The issues are similar to those that arise when discussing how to treat conscientious objectors in wartime.

Deep in the mountainside . . . Okay, so the idea that the Golden Plates weren’t really made of gold, but rather out of a lighter alloy called tumbaga has now been kicking around for almost 40 years. To what effect, I wonder. Is this a theory which you accept, constant reader? A theory which…

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sneezed at church, only to have a church member suggest some sort of herbal remedy. Echinacea, goldenseal, St. John’s Wort, chapparal, clover honey, ginsing . . . you name it, and it’s been offered to me at some point by a church member. Along with suggestions for magnetic treatment,…

Yes, we’ve discussed it previously, last year. Still, it’s a topic that is sometimes on my mind, as I try to raise three kids with a minimal loss of sanity for everyone involved: To spank, or not to spank; and if to spank, how?

An interesting threadjack began this afternoon, and I see no reason not to continue that threadjack in its own post.** Shawn Bailey asked: How did everyone here initially find Times & Seasons or the Bloggernacle in general?

Here’s a fun little mental exercise, which ends up with a curious result that I just noticed. First, let’s classify participants in a group blog as entering the group through either a top-down or bottom-up route. The top-down route begins with offline connections: Person A operates a blog; she offers a co-blogging position to Person…

My esteemed co-blogger Nate often says that he considers me “older and wiser.” For the next few months, however, that description will only be half-right. That’s because today is Nate’s birthday!! (And so for a few months, we’ll be the same age). Congratulations on the big 3-0, Nate. Hau’oli la hanau. You can now officially…

On another thread, commenter Benyamin Abrams asks: Most prayers are addressed to Heavenly Father and closed in the name of Jesus Christ. The Sacrament prayer has both the opening and closing in the opening. I asked some members of my Ward if there were any other prayers with the same format. It’s an interesting question.…

There’s been quite a bit of buzz in the blogosphere at large about Jennifer 8. Lee’s New York Times piece on “man-dates.” Lee suggests that it is socially perilous for two heterosexual men to meet for dinner, without sports, business, or a bar to defuse the date-like-ness of the meeting. I don’t know how valid…

We’ve all heard of chiasm, that Hebrew literary device of repeating elements in reverse order. Since 1969, when Jack Welch first suggested that the Book of Mormon contained chiasm, some Mormon apologists have argued that the presence of chiasm in the Book of Mormon is evidence of its ancient origins. Numerous chiasm articles have appeared…

Well, they can, perhaps, but we’d like to think that they aren’t. Lost in the technical issues last week was the fact that we registered our half-millionth visitor. I’m still often amazed at how much we’ve grown since we first started, in November 2003, with just four bloggers and a handful of readers. Not only…

We’re told that we need to have a testimony of the gospel. And we’re told that we can’t rely on anyone else’e testimony — we must develop our own witness of the truth. It’s a formulation which is surprisingly consistent with the legal guidelines on testimony that one gives in a court case. Federal Rules…

In a blog comment at BCC, Ronan points out a disturbing fact. A google search for “Mormon Temple” is likely to be one of the first things a curious non-member does; but when you google the term Mormon Temple, the first site that comes up on the list is an ex-Mormon site. In fact, the…

The church is 175 years old. (The technical term is “terquasquicentennial,” in case you were wondering). And we also believe that Jesus was born on April 6th. (Don’t we?) (And is that a Julian April 6th? A Gregorian? An April 6th in some cosmic, platonic form? I’m not really sure.) Happy birthday to all.

An interesting discussion has been taking place in the blogosphere. It begins with recent studies showing that very few academics are conservative or Republican. (The ratio is about 15 to 1). Paul Krugman’s op-ed in today’s New York Times suggests a few reasons for this imbalance, among them the influence of anti-evolution politics and the…

A sometimes charged little threadjack discussion has been going on in Julie’s latest book review, over a statement by Adam. Adam’s initial statement was “In my experience, the more sympathy and prominence paid to feminists, the more excluded people like my wife feel.” Adam’s reasoning is, I think, a good example of a broader phenomenon…