Category: Cornucopia

Will Baude discusses something called the 50 book challenge, with the idea being to read 50 books this year and blog about them. Not a bad idea.

Don’t laugh. Especially not on Sunday. The Doctrine and Covenants makes this pretty clear: And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day . . . And inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving,…

My parents died a few years ago, both in their nineties, after a fulfilling life and with the memories of having survived two world wars and sixty years of marriage on the Old Continent.

Thanks to a cool feature on the scriptures.byu.edu website, it’s easy to rank the scriptures by the frequency they’ve been cited in General Conferences since 1942. I guessed number one, but was surprised by several of the top ten. Before checking the answers, make a few guesses: What are the most prominent scriptures in Mormondom?

As many of you know, I served a mission in Romania (Feb. ’92 – Jan. ’94). Yes, I worked with orphans. But I can’t write about that. Not yet. This one comes first…

April 16, 1963 MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would…

Now for a fun project — let’s rewrite the hymn book! In particular, let’s discuss a few hymns which (in a perfect world) might be headed for the chopping block.

I just finished a blog several pages long. It began a couple of weeks ago when a Belgian friend, Rudi, called to wish me a happy new year and to talk about making arrangements for his visit to BYU in April.

Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Maureen Dowd’s op-ed piece, “Men Just Want Mommy” published in yesterday’s New York Times is getting a lot of attention. I’ve had a half a dozen friends email it to me with notes attached at the bottom that vary from outrage to despair.

We’ve moved the site from the /wp directory to the root directory. (This move may help restore our burnished Google-rank).* The site is now fully running at the root directory. (Yeah, there was a brief period where it, uh, wasn’t. Sorry about that). There’s also a .htaccess rewrite in place to route people to the…

I’ve been reviewing the essays in the groundbreaking (and, unfortunately, still one-of-a-kind) anthology Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives in preparation for a series that I plan on running on A Motley Vision this spring. One of the impressive things about the work is the high level of professional achievement attained by the contributors. That combined…

Over the past few days, I’ve been discussing the atonement with a Catholic friend. We’ve been comparing the different ideas our two faiths have (he’s fascinated, for instance, by the primacy that Mormons give to Gethsemane). One issue that has arisen, and that I don’t have a good answer for, is this — why does…

I’m the Webelos and 11-year-old Scouts leader in our ward; we meet at the church every Wednesday, which is the day of the week pretty much everything youth-related happens. Given that many people drive quite a distance to make it to various meetings and activities, it’s not unusual for a few families to show up…

You may have noticed that we’re tinkering with some template ideas. In particular, drop-down menus look fun and promising. However, they can’t be everywhere. (Or can they?).

As of this writing, the average visitor to Times & Seasons spends 7 minutes and 28 seconds on the site. In blogtime, that is simply unparalleled.

Today is the first day of registration for Especially For Youth, and I am waiting in the queue: #276 of 325 people waiting in line.

We’re doing some slight tinkering. Any feedback is appreciated. (Also, if we break something, please let us know, along with any relevant details — “I can no longer load the page in Netscape” or whatever.) Thanks!

This past weekend I flew down to New Orleans to participate in a panel at the Southern Political Science Association on “The Theory and Practice of Mormon Politics.” The panel was originally proposed and organized by our own Nate Oman and frequent T&S commenter Jeremiah John, a graduate student at Notre Dame; unfortunately, Nate wasn’t…

Enough theory. It’s time to get to actual examples of Mormon kitsch. The following represent my picks — some because I actually like them (don’t tell anybody), some because they’re just weird, and some because they’re hecka funny.

I strongly, strongly disapprove of the teachings of the prophets and it is all John A. Widstoe’s fault. Now just for the record, I think that John A. Widstoe is a very cool guy. Indeed, when people ask me about my goatee, I always respond that I am simply trying to look like Widstoe. (Which…

I’ll preface this by noting that it is axiomatic that I am nowhere near as cool as Greg Call. I’m not as cool as William Morris, either, and I’m not really as cool as Kristine, even if she does like Abba. I like to think that I’m as cool as D. Fletcher, but I’m probably…

The bankruptcy code has some deep things to say about the nature of tithing. In order to understand why, we have to take a little detour through the nature of bankruptcy law and couple of technicalities in the code. Bear with me on this, and I promise that there are some fun questions at the…

In his 1977 work Faces of Modernity: Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Matei Calinescu writes, “What constitues the essence of kitsch is probably its open-ended indeterminacy, its vague ‘hallucinatory’ power, it’s spurious dreaminess, its promise of an easy ‘catharsis’” (228). Kitsch, then, is the experience of art made easy. It is junk food consumption. It is manifested…

As I read yesterday’s text from the David O. McKay reader, “Jesus Christ: ‘The Way, the Truth, and the Life,’â€? I was struck by its repeated injunction to apply Christ’s words to our lives—and, more boldly, to extend that application into the world. I frequently hear admonitions of this sort urging me to liken the…