Category: Cornucopia

No one else has commented on the recent First Presidency statement on Same-Gender marriage, so I’ll venture something. Forgive me if this has been hashed out before — I haven’t read all of the gargantuan threads in the archives.

This should be a blog administrator post, but I’m not blog administrator. Anyway, I tracked down the bug in the comment code. Please let me know if you have any unexpected problems posting now by replying to this comment. Of course, if you are having problems posting, you might not be able to reply, but…

A year ago I met a French philosopher, Michel Juffé, at a conference on Levinas and psychology at Seattle University. In August of this year, I took part in a conference on loss that he sponsored at Cerisy-la-Salle, in Normandy.

Sartre once remarked that “hell is other people.â€? The remark, I think, is revealing. In a sense the brand of existentialism pushed by Sartre represents the apotheosis of individualism. In the end, he offers nothing beyond the authenticity of personal choice, which becomes the ultimate source of meaning and value. His view of hell suggest…

Seinfeld fans will remember this memorable speech by George Costanza, contemplating the impending meeting of his fiancee Susan and his friend Elaine: George: You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to exist. You see, right now…

Rusty at Nine Moons has recently offered a tri-partite model of nudity: P0rnography: nudity with the intent to arouse (Playb0y, p0rn sites, p0rn movies, etc.). Nudity: lack-of-clothing with the intent to display beauty, non-beauty, or nature (Manet, Rodin, fine art photography, etc.). Lack-of-clothing: no clothing with no intent except utilitarian purposes (breast feeding, showering, sex,…

Ok, so it doesn’t work as well as the Lennon/McCartney original. Still. Consider this a more or less open thread on the topic of serving “senior missions” (has the church settled on a specific nomenclature yet?). Some months ago, after listening to a talk at a stake conference, or perhaps a general conference address, it…

I had occasion to reflect upon 3 Ne. 11 recently in preparation for a Gospel Doctrine lesson. As I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have lived through the calamities that were a part of the sign of Christ’s death in the Americas, I was struck again by the fact that…

In a prior thread, Aaron suggested that we make a blogger family tree and Bryce gave his own information. It’s a fun question — who knows who, and how, outside of the loose cluster of LDS blogs that we call the bloggernacle?

(awkward pause) (waits expectantly)

There seems to be a minor bug in one of the comment scripts, which is causing error messages when people enter comments. As usual, our crack team of elite experts (hah!) is investigating. In the meantime, as far as we can tell, all comments are going through just fine — it’s just giving an error…

MBM: A New Convert BMS: Aaron Teaches King Lamoni’s Father

Today brings to an end Jana’s stint as a guest blogger. Thank you, Jana, for sharing a slice of your very interesting life and for your thoughtful posts. We wish you well in your writing projects.

Professor Decoo, a Belgian convert to the Church in 1964 (hah! I beat him by two years), is a professor of French in the French and Italian Department of BYU, where he has been since 1999. However, he continues also to work in Belgium, during Spring and Summer terms, at the University of Antwerp, where…

It’s amazing the amount of time and energy we put into commenting or posting on the blog, interacting with people who we’ve never seen. And isn’t this a little like faith? I’m not sure; sometimes I think it is. I’ve never met Jim Faulconer, but I have faith that someone called “Jim Faulconer” exists. Through…

I was discussing the Word of Wisdom with my wife Mardell, and she came up with a really good question. One of the things which surprises many members who look at all into church history is the discovery that the current Word of Wisdom was not strictly followed by early church leaders. Joseph Smith is…

That’s what this story says: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will do Halloween things on Saturday, Arizona spokesman Don Evans said. “When a holiday such as this falls on Sunday, we automatically celebrate on the previous day,” he said. “One of the Ten Commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy.”…

Hi all, Sorry I’ve been quiet; we had a bit of a family medical emergency here that took up much of my energy. Sometime late last week, my five-year-old daughter injured her knee, and with each day that passed it seemed to worsen. By Tuesday her knee was a huge, red swollen mass with a…

Our lesson in elders’ quorum last Sunday was on the importance of scripture study. I shared a story that I frequently share when called upon to say something about studying the scriptures. As I was retelling it this Sunday, however, I had an epiphany: I was being a Jim Faulconer poseur.

Any other GD teachers out there? I’ve been in this calling for just over two years now, and it’s the second-favorite calling I’ve had in the Church. (I love teaching, but nothing compares to working with the youth.) I’ve been reflecting lately on what works, and what doesn’t, in my Gospel Doctrine class.

I’m wondering why I am being so defensive of Derrida on the thread on my post about his death and on Russell’s—and in the hallway at BYU today when I accosted a poor student who was going on about deconstruction and Derrida in a remarkably uninformed way.

Fans of Brandie Siegfried, please be patient. She intended to start blogging last Monday or Tuesday, but as sometimes happens even to professors and bloggers, life got in the way. You can expect her any day now.

Derrida’s passing is probably of interest to almost no one here, and the number of people who will be able to come up with a connection between Derrida and Mormonism is no doubt even fewer. (That is, I think there’s only one: Jim.) Still, though Derrida was ultimately not that important to me either philosophically…

Perhaps no philosopher of the 20th century caused more of an uproar in the U.S. than Jacques Derrida. Though he was not religious in any standard sense, he understood a great deal about what it means to be religious. Though he was often described in the English-speaking press as arrogant, he was in fact quiet…