By and large, the bloggernacle is can be a pretty whiney, carping Read More

John Fowles’s comment on the Pope (namely, that he “has been a true Christian his whole life and a marvelous example of Christian charity and love to the whole world….I am confident that he will make the right choices in the spirit world”), made at By Common Consent and picked up (out of context) by the Salt Lake Tribune, has inspired a series of sharp exchanges at BCC. The argument there (which is a good one to read through) basically boils down to whether or not the belief that the spirit of Pope John Paul II, now presumably in the… Read More

UPDATE: It’s working! Thanks to everyone who made suggestions. Also, as with any change to our filters, we’ve tried to be as careful as we can not to block innocent posts. But it’s always possible that I didn’t design or implement this quite right, and that it will inadvertently catch your innocent post. If it does, please let us know, as soon as possible. Thanks! Read More

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 has this site grown, but the rest of the bloggernacle has grown around us as well. It’s been a fun journey. And it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without you, our readers and commenters. So thanks for reading. Thanks for your comments. And hopefully… Read More

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 of Evidence, Rule 802 is clear: “Hearsay is not admissible.” [subject to certain specified exceptions]. Read More

They were all to their love. A silent, suffering love, eyes staring into eyes. Standing at a few inches from each other, the fence between them. A huge fence, of strong wire-netting that would not let a hand get through. Both were barely twenty years old. Read More

I just heard that John Paul II requested that his personal papers be burned. I don’t know if it’s the historian in me or just the fact that I’m a Mormon, but I gasped at this news. I couldn’t help being curious about why he would have wanted this record destroyed. As a self-consciously journaling people would it ever cross any Latter-day Saint’s mind to make such a request? This got me thinking about the nature of our journaling. Knowing that what we write will be viewed by posterity, do we, consciously or not, write for an audience? If so,… Read More

I think our Stake Executive Council must be scheduling its meetings right after the TV show “Numb3rs.” Either that or tax season is getting to everyone. Read More

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 first four sites listed on the front page are ex-Mormon sites. Of the 10 sites on the front page, five are ex-Mormon, two are links to LDS.org, one is apologetic and two are neutral. So the first page for Mormon Temple is 5-to-2 anti. Exacerbating… Read More

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. Read More

We haven’t had any resource problems for the past several hours. I’m cautiously bringing the main index back online. If it starts to flare up again, I may have to go back to the barebones index. Read More

Is there a program or utility that will tell me what parts of T & S are using server resources? Right now, I’ve got cpanel, and that’s it. So I can watch our resource use spike, and I can turn off plugins. And I can pull the index offline. And see if that helps any. But it would be nice if I could get a more exact picture. (i.e., “server use – 10. Breakdown: 2.0 for index.php, 1.0 for wp-comments-post.php, and 7.0 for blacklist.php” which would tell me “aha, the blacklist is what’s tying up resources”). Suggestions? Read More

Okay, that didn’t work. We spiked again, knocked out Apache again. I took down our index file and reverted back to the out-of-the-box default wordpress index. (Pretty, huh?) We’ll see if that helps. Maybe there’s a script in our index that’s crashing the site. Read More

We just had a technical mini-crisis. I think it’s past. Read More

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 idea that “today’s Republican Party – increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research – doesn’t respect science, or scholarship in general.” It is not surprising that Krugman’s op-ed has not been received with unanimous approval. Read More

A few days after I returned from my trip to New York, I packed the suitcases again–this time with the children’s pajamas and toothbrushes, too–and flew to Utah for the annual conference of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, where I was slated to read a paper. Read More

– And, Brother Decoo, could you come in your native dress? It’s this time of the year again. Circus by the aliens. Officially it’s called Cultural Heritage Night, or International Fashion Show, or LDS WorldFest. Mormons love it. Read More

My wife bought a basketball standard this winter. It was on sale, our oldest son had been asking for one for months, and my wife is a great basketball player. The only problem: assembly required. Read More

When Pope John Paul II was named “Man of the Year” in 1994 by Time Magazine, I cut off the cover, framed it, and put it up in our apartment. We kept it up, from one apartment to the next, for a couple of years, and even at one point had a framed photo of President Hinckley on the wall next to it as well. (No visitor ever commented on our arrangement, though I often wonder what some of them may have thought.) So yes, you could say I was a major fan of the Pope. I mourn his passing,… Read More

This is the place, as it were, for comments on conference. I’m going to stop typing and listen. Read More

Jim’s post “A Small Thing” and the comments it elicited reminded me that good Mormons not only can’t have beards, they can’t have tattoos either! Read More

We’ve been in close negotiations to purchase some used karaoke equipment from a despondent Steve Evans. Given the course of negotiation, we’re confident that we’ll close the deal soon. And so, without further ado, it’s time to announce our latest regular feature: Times and Seasons karaoke! Once we get a few technical bugs worked out, we’ll post the first installment, which is Nate’s not-to-be-missed performance of My Way. We expect to follow shortly afterwards with Kristine’s rousing rendition of Dancing Queen, as well as a special performance of The New Kids on the Block – Please Don’t Go Girl, sung… Read More

Wow — I didn’t see this one coming. It is with a heavy heart that we announce a major shake-up in the blogosphere. Steve at BCC is calling it quits. We would say that we enjoyed reading BCC; that its posts were always top-notch; that it made the sunshine brighter and the birds song sweeter. But none of that is really true. I mean, how far can a blog really expect to go when its founder is a Canadian? But we’ll miss BCC around here. We’ll miss having them around as a convenient foil. We’ll miss the cautionary tale element… Read More

Theodore Geisel’s treatise Green Eggs and Ham (Beginner Books) is an ambitious work. It seeks to unify themes of longing, friendship, anger, acceptance, and culinary conformity. In addition, the book delves into Mormon themes — as one might expect, given Geisel’s little-known affiliation with the Mormon church — including blood atonement, polygamy, eternal progression, Kolob, Facsimiles One and Two, and sugar beets. Covering all of this ground would be a hard task under any conditions. And Geisel’s attempt to do so in a mere 62 pages is breathtaking in its audacity. One must give the man credit for his gumption.… Read More

The leaks are just too many to ignore. It’s apparently official. Following the legal victories of alternative marriage advocates in state and federal courts, the Church will announce this weekend that the doctrine of plural marriage has been restored. Read More