Category: Cornucopia

I think that people ought to be able to sell their kidneys. Especially poor people.

My a capella group, The Longfellow Singers, will present “Sacred Harmony: A Celebration of Worldwide Choral Traditions” this coming Sunday as a benefit concert for the victims of the recent southeast Asia tsunami. We will be singing selections from Renaissance-era Europe as well as folk songs and hymns from Africa, Korea, New Zealand and the…

Lost in all of the buzz about the Bloggernacle Awards (I was tempted to make a big acceptance speech until I realized that I got only 21 of the votes cast for the category I won, meaning that the vast majority of the voting public was against me) was an interesting set of comments asking…

That’s the implication of this angry piece by David Velleman, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan. Reading about the activities of certain evangelical groups to proselytize in the wake of the tsunami catatrosphe (some of which, I agree, are more than a little insensitive), Velleman reflects upon his discovery, over a decade ago,…

OK. I know that this will mark me as a total geek, but I recently came across a copy of Census of 1850, which is the first census with information on Utah. The numbers provide a fun snap shot of the Mormon commonwealth three years after its founding.

Someone named Katherine posted the following on the What Think Ye? thread: “The subjects of women and the Priesthood and women and the church are ones I honestly struggle with. My questions are does God love women less than men, does he esteem us less, and are we worth less in the eternities? While my…

We’re commanded in the scriptures to fear God. Why? What does this formulation mean, anyway?

I experience flashes of poetry, but I was assigned an unreliable muse in the heretofore, alas. My moment of greatest poetic inspiration arrived when I was twelve or thirteen, on a trip across country in our fifteen-passenger Ford van. My mother devised a contest among us siblings to compose the best family cheer, and, motivated…

Last week my bishop encouraged us to read M. Russell Ballard’s talk “Pure Testimony” from last General Conference. I did, and it has caused me to reevaluate how I share my own testimony.

I recently returned from what may turn out to have been a very important job interview. (Then again, it may not.) When my wife mentioned this interview to a friend via e-mail, the friend wrote back, asking if I’d received a priesthood blessing before I’d gone. I hadn’t.

Next fall my firstborn will start kindergarten. As such he has the choice between the local elementary (4 blocks from home) and the charter school (Freedom Academy). He has other choices but he isn’t going to exercise them, so we’ll ignore those.

For those interested, here is the final schedule for the LDS Law Students’ Conference

The Book of Mormon has a number of not so complimentary things to say about contention. Generally speaking, I have heard this interpreted as an admonition to be nice and change the subject if anything controversial comes up. My problem with this, of course, is that I am not especially nice, and I like controversy.

Karl was a stutterer and he had to say the sacrament prayer.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, a love simile: If married love were chocolate, it would be have to be a bittersweet dark, because no chalky milk or bland white could adequately convey the depth, complexity, and challenge of fidelity in marriage.

For those in the New York City area this weekend, you have a chance to come and heckle Kaimi and I in person.

My wife just mentioned this to me, and it has me wondering. If the church really wants mothers to stay at home, then why do many full-time church employees seem not to be paid enough to make that happen?

Yes, Pink. Apparently the color scheme of at least one bloggernacle site is enough to deter workplace browsing. John F. writes that he cannot visit Feminist Mormon Housewives while at work, because “ I feel nervous about a fellow associate walking in (or a partner, for that matter) and seeing the hot pink and knowing…

Here’s a verse for the poor slaves and servants to that vile master, p0rnography.

This evening, my wife (aka She Who Must Be Obeyed) and I were having an interesting discussion about the topic of her forthcoming Relief Society lesson. I thought that I would improve the average quality of the posts here by passing on her thoughts and questions. She writes:

Today in Priesthood we studied Lesson 3 in the Teachings of Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay. Rarely have I felt so out of sync with the lesson.

In an interesting editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune (reg. req’d), my friend Professor David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania Law School discusses the use of faith as a defense to criminal charges by several prominent CEOs, including Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom Inc., Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth Corp., and Kenneth Lay of Enron Corp. David…

Two weeks ago I caught a few minutes of a story on NPR about the Church’s Indian Placement Program.

Consider two different Mormon reactions to state-sponsored repression: the anti-polygamy crusade and Mormons in East Germany.